


String Theory

by meanderingsoul



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Age Difference, Alpha Scott McCall, Applying to College, Awkwardness, Banshees, Beacon County Sheriffs Department, Beacon Hills High School, Blood and Injury, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Female Friendship, First Dates, First Time, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Gen, Graduation, Grief/Mourning, Hellhound Jordan Parrish, Kidnapping, Late Night Conversations, Making Out, McCall Pack, Misunderstandings, Oral Sex, Pack Dynamics, Parent-Child Relationship, Past Character Death, Past Relationship(s), Road Trips, Romanticized Physics, Sleepy Cuddles
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-01
Updated: 2017-05-06
Packaged: 2018-05-30 14:02:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 36,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6426742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meanderingsoul/pseuds/meanderingsoul
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Moments collect between people like threads, threads that twist together and grow strong, or tangle around other threads into complexities, threads that trail away backwards or far away into nothing, or sometimes even snap.</p><p>Lydia liked to think about her powers like string theory.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Open Strings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Open Strings - Point to point across a distance. Travel, wait, withstand. The space between is heavy. But we encompass the world as we reach._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is chapter one of a post season five fic, focusing on Lydia's friendships, her growing relationship with Jordan Parrish, and a pack that is still learning how to be a pack together. It will be posted here in five parts of roughly equal size. The rating and some of the tags are for later chapters. Summary and tags may change as the author remembers to do things. This chapter alone is rated T.
> 
> Enjoy. :)

 

They hadn’t kissed yet, but Lydia knew now that it was only a matter of time.

Parrish had seen the Argent’s leaving on his way to them, and of the two only Gerard had been bleeding, which made everyone who knew about him literally sigh in relief. Deucalion seemed to have taken his leave, which was probably for the best. Scott had never said how he’d found Deucalion so quickly, or why the alpha had agreed to mislead Theo without a price. There were still tasks to be done, Mason was still considered missing and would need to go to the police with some story. They hadn’t heard from Hayden or Malia. But everyone stood in the tunnels in silence for a moment, just one moment, no sound but quick breathing that calmed minute by minute.

Then there was a buzz. Scott checked his cell phone, claws and ears vanishing with a shake of his head. “Stiles and Malia are at the hospital with Braeden. She has the Desert Wolf captured. The talons worked.”

“Are they ok?” Kira asked, clipping her sword belt back around her waist. No one looked at the ground where Theo had been taken. There was still a smell hanging in the air of cold dry dust.

“Braeden was shot, Stiles needs stitches, Malia was shot _a bunch_? But apparently absorbing the Desert Wolf’s power seems to have fixed that already. Kira, did you drive here? Good. Lydia, we’ll take you back to the hospital and go check on them.”

They headed up out of the empty tunnels, bare concrete behind them like nothing had even happened. Lydia’s left ankle was starting to hurt from the fall and that shot seemed to be losing its effects, oh her head was _pounding_. 

She’d be damned if she let someone carry her out of here after all this.

Mason still looked stunned, clinging to Corey’s hand with Liam hovering close at his other side. Corey watched Mason breathe with that starveling look of someone who didn’t have many nice things in their world.

A warm hand grasped her elbow and she let Parrish steady her as they walked.

“I heard you scream but then you went quiet. I couldn’t find you. They’d texted me you’d been hurt, but I couldn’t leave.”

Lydia didn’t think she could actually turn her head to look at him, so she reached around with her other arm to pat his hand. “It’s ok. I’m ok.” But her voice caught and skipped half the syllables.

He slid his arm around her waist tightly, taking some of her weight, and as he ducked under a low pipe she saw his mouth was bloody, dull red smears.

She reached towards his face. “Wh…”

He caught her fingers and squeezed before she turned her head. “You probably shouldn’t talk. I, uh couldn’t get the fangs to go down. Scott had to help me.”

She made a face at him.

“Yeah, I know, lighting myself on fire shouldn’t be easier to deal with than teeth, but apparently it is.”

When they got outside Parrish stopped, turned and wrapped his other arm around her shoulders, pulling her close to him and carefully resting his cheek against the uninjured side of her head. “I’m really glad you’re ok.”

She breathed in against his skin and smelled char and coppery, acrid stress, but also salt, androstenol, and maybe a trace of some kind of Polo. Lydia was so, so tired now, and staying right here seemed wonderful, but she smoothed her hand down his warm back and let him go, let Scott help her into Kira’s car and Parrish walk away with Mason and Corey. Liam took off into the trees at a run.

Lydia listened out through the window and the night was quiet in every way for the first time in months.

*

The strange group that made up the McCall mess pack didn’t really take much of a break once Mason was back, Hayden bitten, and the Beast dead with the rest of the failures.

That first weekend they all just took over Scott’s living room and frantically finished all their college applications.

Lydia’s throat was still wrapped in bandages and her voice was hoarse and crackly from the renewed swelling, but there shouldn’t be any long term effects. It was about the only thing keeping her mother from going insane. Scott had tried to reduce the pain multiple times, but that particular trick didn’t seem to work on banshees any better than an alpha’s bite had.

He made her tea instead.

Lydia had finally had enough and clicked 'send' on her college essays, to get it over with. She’d already spun what Peter’d done to her into as much of a “personal perseverance” story as she feasibly could. And nothing about this fall was _ever_ leaving this town if she could help it.

So she ended up sitting between Malia and Kira while they both staggered through the common app, proofread Scott’s abysmal essays, and had a pitifully quiet shouting match with Stiles over the _proper_ way to brew coffee and how that didn’t involve taking off his sling, and why his interpretation of the Stanford Prison Experiment was Completely Wrong. Kira was applying to what seemed like every single nursing program between Sacramento and San Francisco even though her test scores had actually come back ok, and Malia…

Lydia couldn’t say she hadn’t been as surprised as everyone else when Malia had sat down with them and opened up college applications instead of something to study.

Kira looked wide-eyed at Lydia who glanced at Stiles who was gaping at the back of Malia’s head and poking Scott with his bad arm. It would probably be much better for the injury if Scott could stand seeing Stiles in pain.

Scott finally coughed while gently forcing Stiles’ arm back into its sling. “Malia, are you applying to college now too?”

Malia continued squinting at her laptop. “Yeah, apparently I need an associate’s degree in… something useful. Otherwise I won't be qualified enough.”

Kira leaned across the table to look at her past Lydia. “What did you decide to do?”

“I actually talked to Stiles’ dad and then Lydia’s mom at the school, and I only need an associate’s degree to be a park ranger. I can make it through two more years of school. I think.”

Lydia patted her hand. “Of course you can.”

“Wow, that’s great Malia, you’ll be really good at that,” said Scott, smiling warmly.

Stiles awkwardly patted Malia’s shoulder with his good arm. It was _painfully_ obvious they still hadn’t talked. “Seriously Malia, that is a really mature and reasonable decision making process. I don’t know when you had time to do that with, everything else. I accidentally implied that I’d ever thought about being a cop to my dad last week and now I have no idea what I’m going to do.”

Malia beamed. “Thanks guys. I even told my dad, since he’s on the way back from his business trip, and he thinks so too. But now I have to take the SAT.” And her smile vanished. Lydia knew Malia’s PSAT score hadn’t been _terrible_. Malia still showed her all her grades, the good ones with a smile like a proud puppy.

But, it certainly hadn’t been _good_.

“Let’s go ahead and get you signed up for that later next month, so you have time to study.” Lydia said.

Some other people still had their SAT’s to take yet this month. Scott was clicking through online sample questions with a slightly frantic expression. Lydia was only four points shy of a perfect score on the mathematics portion, annoying, but she’d already decided against retaking it. There were other things in her life she needed to be doing. Liam and Hayden, Mason and Corey sat on the floor nearby with Scott’s glitchy Xbox, and looked on at the proceedings with badly disguised horror. It would be their turn for all this mess soon enough. Scott would probably come back to help them.

Lydia never had gotten to find out what Allison would have done. She knew what her family had once expected for her, but that was never going to be Allison, even after everything that had gone down so badly. Allison was sweet and strong, liked history and being outdoors. She could have done so many things.

The younger members of the pack eventually went home. Scott left to bring his mother dinner and came back to more SAT questions, smelling like fog. Lydia started getting drowsier, and suddenly she was leaning on Malia’s shoulder on Scott’s couch and Stiles was tugging a blanket down over her legs.

She fell asleep to Kira dictating her “why I chose this career path” essay to Scott, sitting next to Lydia on the couch with her legs draped down over his shoulders and chin in his hair, and Malia carding her fingers gently through Lydia's hair.

*

It was Hague who'd first told Parrish about Lydia Martin, back shortly after he’d first started at the sheriff’s department.

Hague tossed the McDonald's bag into Parrish’s lap and slammed the passenger door. “Dayum, could that have taken any longer? Where to next?”

Parrish was going to have to remember to start bringing something along to eat, so Hague would stop talking him into eating junk when it got late. “There was a call in to the station about somebody wandering around one of the graveyards just north of here, won’t take long to check out and then we can swing by along the highway.”

Hague cursed, dropped his burger back in its box and clicked on his radio, “Dispatch, this is Hague. Was it a red headed girl?”

There was a delay, then a crackly, “Yeah.”

Hague rolled his eyes at Parrish. “Come on dispatch, you know we’re supposed to ignore those. Don’t shit on the new guy just cause you’ve got a bet with Emerson.”

Nothing came back through the radio except a rude noise. Hague went back to his burger, so Parrish went ahead and started driving towards the highway. “So, what was that about?”

“That’s Lydia Martin, one of the sheriff’s kid’s friends.”

Parrish felt that didn’t really explain much of anything. “So, why are we leaving a high school kid alone in a graveyard late at night?”

Hague shrugged. “All you really need to know is basically every time the sheriff says we’ve gotten an anonymous tip-off about a body, it wasn’t anonymous, it was her.”

That was… interesting. “How is she doing that? Obviously she’s not the one killing them.”

Hague snorted. “As if. Girl's tiny, but who the hell knows man. It’s gotta be something weird, but the sheriff doesn’t want anyone to know about it, so don’t let on I told you, alright? There’s a lot of open secrets in this department.”

Parrish nodded. The highway was deserted except for the occasional big rig truck, and past it was all national forest land, so not really their problem despite being part of the county. He turned back towards Beacon Hills. “So, why is she in the graveyard? Usually everyone’s already aware the people there have died.”

“You know those wanted posters, for that mugging that went wrong? The ones that look like something out of a fucking movie? That was her friend that got killed. She sits in there and talks to her grave like a crazy person.”

Parrish wasn’t an idiot, or kidding himself. He knew very well the world was full of things no one knew how to explain yet. He wasn’t sure if this story could be written off as Hague bullshitting him and a girl grieving for her friend, or if she was actually finding dead bodies like some kind of medium or psychic. Except that kind of thing was just people who knew how to tell families what they needed to hear. Of course it was. Had to be.

Human biology had limits after all.

Of course, after the Oni had stormed into the station, and he’d seen how bullets couldn’t take them down and the wounds from them turned black like high speed gangrene, Parrish was a lot more willing to believe in things like psychics when he eventually met Lydia in the wendigos’ house.

*

Kira left shortly after that.

She didn’t say much to anyone beforehand. A few extra tight hugs goodbye one day and suddenly she simply, wasn’t there. Scott came to Lydia’s back gate late that Sunday night, told her to tell anyone who asked that Kira had a bad case of mono and might be out of school for months. He was turning something between his fingers in his pocket, and Lydia suspected it might be Kira’s one and only Tail.

“She went to the skinwalkers,” Lydia said, the paving stones bitterly cold on her bare feet.

Scott leaned against the brick gate and stared into the woods. “Yeah. She said she needed to, for her own sake. She’s, scared of herself right now.”

And they both knew what that was like. He didn't have to say a word.

“But she’ll be back.”

And she heard the questioning tone of the question Scott didn’t want to ask her, if Lydia had a bad _feeling_ about this change, if Scott had somehow made a mistake, if Kira was in danger.

She squeezed his shoulder. “Of course she will.”

*

Parrish still actually really liked Beacon Hills.

He liked spending unrealistic amounts of time dealing with animal attacks, robberies with nothing logical stolen, violent fights with an inexplicable lack of gunfire. The fact that every single violent criminal seemed to come off the highway into Beacon Hills, but the drug traffic was minuscule. He liked the wild forest that cradled the valley town and seemed to lean in outside his window, was never upset about dealing with calls of strange noises in the woods, strange symbols in places they had no reason to be. He’d been fine with it even before he knew the real depth of the supernatural out in the world, before he knew it was the Hellhound more than him that had felt relieved when he’d moved here.

The department had had a high rate of unsolved killings, injured cops, and people rapidly transferring away to other counties before he’d transferred in from the San Jose area, but Parrish had liked it from the start.

The sheriff was a good boss to work for, and most of his colleagues were friendly. And he liked Scott and Stiles and Lydia and all the rest of them. They were all good kids, except they weren’t always good (Stiles especially seemed to have an interesting interpretation of good that involved a lot of petty crime, blatant manipulation, and ignoring stuff like the existence of warrants) and they were hardly _kids_ , despite their age. He couldn’t even make himself think of them as kids, and he’d given a few of them rides to school more than once for one reason or another. Apparently, after you kill _a monster_ together with certain people that rational part of your brain just calls it quits.

Suddenly, and completely by accident, it seemed he was more one of them than he’d ever been one of anything else in his entire life, especially since he’d woken up and thrashed his way out of his torched car, with the only thought in his head to grind Hague into the dirt.

It might’ve first changed when Lydia told him about the truth about the deadpool. Or at Derek’s loft, where they’d told him the rest of the truth. Or maybe it really happened at Eichen House, after Brunski, when he’d ended up half carrying Lydia and half dragging Stiles out of the building, holding a sandwich baggie of ice against Stiles head while they waited for backup officers to arrive and tried to get Lydia to stop frantically pacing.

Or maybe it was the first time Lydia helped him shift over to the Hellhound part of himself while he was awake and so many hazy, dismissable things had become very, very real.

*

They all went back to school. Lydia was driving up to go to _school_.

Half a dozen students had died, several had vanished for days and returned with no explanations, half of the high school had seen Scott shifted and taking on a mutated monster in the library, but people were pouring out of buses, all smiles, like nothing had happened.

It was, jarring this time.

After Deaton had turned off the Noise with mistletoe, after the sheriff had been called, after the additional ER visit and the tetanus shot, the skin graft from her own inner thigh (she was _not_ going to give the Dread Doctors a reason to come for her, and the trepanation hole was small enough not to need surgical intervention for the bone), after she’d showered off the stench of death and damp and despair in her own bathroom and her mom had stayed with her while she slept fitfully in her own bed, Lydia had gotten up, parted her hair to hide the stitches, put on far more foundation than usual and gone to school.

She’d needed the normal setting so desperately she’d only taken half her recommended dose of codeine and put on a normal face as best she could. The pain was only bad if she tipped her head to that side, and nothing compared to the agony of the Noise.

Nothing.

Then there had been something like a whispered sonar ping against her back, and Parrish had somehow dragged himself into the library before he could no longer stand and there was nowhere she could put her hands that wouldn’t hurt him. She’d had to text Scott to bring them his spare clothes so they could even get him out of the school; Stiles' frame was narrower but always forgot to keep some in his locker.

Then she’d met the Hellhound.

There was a certain amount of strangeness she could reasonably bear in her life, and they’d been well above that threshold these past few months. Now that it was really over she thought she’d want that normality back immediately, just like the last time, but the sunny high school with nothing lurking nearby just looked surreal.

But Malia was smiling at her, waiting. It was time for some normal.

She took Malia’s arm and walked right in.

*

Lydia and Parrish ended up having a lot of late night coffee rendezvous during the holiday breaks.

Lydia still had school, even though she was only technically taking three classes and didn’t actually need any of them, except for the Calculus 2 correspondence course Mr. Desmond had helped her arrange. The Beacon Hills police department was still short staffed, and Parrish worked late into the night most of the week and two shifts on Wednesdays, so Wednesday and Thursday nights she’d bring him coffee. The Sheriff hadn’t ever actually put through Parrish’s resignation of course, just trashed his tires, but his schedule had stayed exhausting and monotonous since he’d been back.

Sheriff Stilinski might be a little too worn out on the supernatural in Beacon Hills to feel like making things easier on him yet.

It was almost Christmas, they’d both be leaving town to visit family soon, so she’d brought him a peppermint mocha instead of his usual just to see his face. He grimaced at the sweetness and she laughed, but he took another drink. “This is actually pretty good. I’ve never had one of these.”

“It’s basically mandatory to have one around the holidays.” 

“Good to know.” Some chatter about a minor wreck downtown came through his radio and he listened carefully before ignoring it. He wasn’t patrolling in the city tonight, still usually took the unincorporated parts of the county, the back roads and deserted parts of the town, old warehouses and empty homes, where supernatural issues were more likely to come up.

“It is easier now,” Parrish said in the gloom. The fog was heavy tonight and the breeze made it twitchy, wisps drifting in curls over the pavement.

“What is?”

“It’s easier to handle all this, knowing what I am, how it happened. Not knowing anything at all was, definitely worse.”

Lydia sipped her tea, traced a drop of damp on the car window. “You never really told me about that,” and out of the corner of her eye he froze.

When she glanced over at him he was twisting his empty cup through his hands. “You don’t have to tell me anything, of course, just, if you wanted to talk about it.”

She waited, watched him officially radio in his break time, tap his thumbs on the steering wheel and stare out at the fog.

“I went MIA for a few days, in Afghanistan. There was a bomb, a different one, there wasn’t any time for the protective gear we usually had. I was working on it and I must have set it off. A few days later, I managed to find a different patrol near the base. I had some burns on my side, some bad sunburn on my back, and I couldn’t remember much. Everyone said I must have gotten behind some rocks in time, hit my head. There was blood in my hair, but I didn’t actually have a head wound. It didn’t make sense, but the guys with me had seen the blast after I told them to take cover, and there’d been too much fire for them to get to me right then. When they went back, I wasn’t there. Everyone just accepted the story. Made all the reports make sense.”

There was something bitter in his voice. Lydia slowly reached for his hand, tucked her fingers into his palm and tugged to rest their hands on the seat next to her thigh. His fingers squeezed around hers tight.

“But I’d actually cut the wrong wire, blew myself up. And the hound moved in. It, showed me what had happened, in the Argent’s freezer.”

“I told it if it didn’t work with you it would lose,” she said quietly.

He looked at her, assessing, like when he was turning a problem over in his head, but his thumb still rubbed warmly over her hand. “It listened. It never puts me out when it takes over anymore, not after that. And when I, reach for it to do things, it lets me. I can tell. It’s easier every time. And now that I know when and how it got in me, I do worry about some things less.”

“Then what’s bothering you Jordan?” because he was still clutching at her fingers but had turned his face away.

He huffed, glanced at her, wry, but looked away out the window before he spoke. “It must be part of what it needs in a host, someone who died on fire.  I’m here, I know I am, I know all of this is real, but I, I shouldn’t actually be alive. Not really.”

Lydia felt a horrid chill that had _nothing_ to do with being a banshee. “Don’t say it like that.”

He sighed. “I don’t mean it like that Lydia, I’m happy I’m still here. I like my life. But I died and I remember it. And what if… maybe it only brought back things that were useful. How would I know if it left things that were really me dead? Nothing natural was going to save me, I remember that much. There wasn’t eno…”

He clenched his jaw shut but she still knew exactly what he’d been about to say. It hung in the air between them like smoke.

“If you weren’t here, I’d be dead. Stiles would be dead too. And Chris Argent. We’d have lost Mason. And who knows whether we would have killed the beast yet, you trapped it for Scott. And how many more people would it have killed without the hound distracting it? And I like you now. I know you’re a good person now. Please don’t worry about that anymore.”

Parrish was staring at her again, eyes wide and rapt on her face like she’d done something amazing, instead of making sure he remembered what the truth was, so she curled a hand around his jaw and pulled him into a kiss.

Lydia always kissed him goodnight now, had been doing so for a couple weeks. Gentle and sweet and almost chaste, but he always leaned into her touch with a smile, like all of this was still a wonderful and unexpected surprise.

Tonight he wrapped his hands around her ribs and clung to her, pulled her closer till she had one hand braced heavily against his chest and was kneeling up in the passenger’s seat over him. His eyes were closed tightly and she felt him whine faintly into her mouth. She curled her tongue over his and scratched her nails along the back of his neck.

He eventually pulled away and leaned his head down against her shoulder with a heavy sigh.

The hound didn’t think like them, she knew that. It was its own kind of entity. It wouldn’t have thought twice about showing Parrish what it had seen when it, moved in, wouldn’t have considered or cared about it hurting him. But she was sorry it had; this was sort of her fault. She remembered how he’d screamed in the Argent’s freezer.

Jordan’s hair was soft against her palms.

He’d still never kissed her first, but she’d get him to relax with her eventually. She wasn’t going anywhere for a while.

Not yet at least.

*

Jordan Parrish had one big problem still, and it wasn’t from finding out he was literally a hellhound. Or that he was technically dead.

Everything Lydia Martin did was cute. Her smiles were cute. Her effortless, brilliant intelligence was cute. Her tiny, colorful skirts and her limitless determination were cute. Her refusal to take no for an answer somehow only when he really hadn’t wanted to tell her no in the first place was cute. She was cute when she was kind and stayed cute when she was cruel and he was feeling a bit disappointed. Even her fist swinging rapidly towards his face had been cute, and if he hadn’t already known he was completely screwed long before that moment that would have provided some realization.

But he’d known he was screwed since the end of last summer when she’d started _flirting_.

Now, Parrish pulled up at the address she’d texted him and saw her step out of her car before he’d even parked and she could see for sure it was him in the vehicle. He’d worry about that, but she had told him what she’d managed to do to Valack. And she’d said she had an easier time _hearing_ where he was compared to the others, though he wasn’t sure he really understood what that meant.

She held out her hand with his coffee as he stepped out of the car and he successfully resisted the urge to prod the pom pom on her knitted hat. It was a cold night again.

“You know, we don’t have to just do stuff like this,” she said.

“Sorry, just a sec. Dispatch, I’m gonna be unavailable for about 15 minutes.” He clicked his radio off. “What do you mean?”

She climbed up to sit on the hood of his car, sipped at her hot chocolate. This playground wasn’t lit at night, so they could see the stars around the pines. “I mean, no one’s coming to kill us just now. We’re not urgently trying to figure out what you are and what you can do anymore. My powers are quiet. We have actual schedules again. We could, pick a day and do something besides working coffee breaks. Or research.”

He leaned on the hood close next to her and sipped his coffee, which was hot and perfect, so much better than the dehydrated sludge available at the station this time of day. “Like what?”

“I don’t know, something fun. Do we remember what fun is?”

Parrish snorted, nudged her with his shoulder and she hummed at him. “What, fun like bowling? A movie?” he asked.

Lydia leaned into his shoulder. He was in uniform of course, but no one was going to see them here and he was warm. The moon was waning. Hayden’s second full moon had gone by without a hitch, the bite having completely overwhelmed the faulty chimera coding. “Mm. Is there anything in theaters that’s good?”

“No, it’s January. There’s nothing new out. We’ll have to wait on that till at least February.”

Lydia hid a smile behind her cup. It wasn’t that she really doubted they’d still be spending time together a month from now, but it was nice to hear him say it like that. “So bowling? Or ice skating? But the rink can get crowded.”

He laughed, let himself wrap an arm around her back when he felt her shiver. “Also I’m terrible.”

“I’ll teach you sometime. Do you dance?”

He shrugged. “I’m not opposed?”

She pouted at him. “No east coast? Lindy?”

“I’m going with no, since I’m not really sure what those are. But wouldn’t one of those be west coast?” They were in California after all, even if she was the only one who’d been born here.

“It’s traitorous of me to say, but east coast swing is _much_ more fun than west. I’ll teach you that sometime too. ”

Parrish stood, their fifteen minutes were definitely up, and she held onto his hand to slide down off the car. He bent down to kiss her when she curled a hand up around his neck. With her up on tip toe he could wrap his arms around her waist, tug her upper lip between his and he definitely needed to get back to work and let her drive home before his head drifted too much.

“So, bowling?”

*

They actually went bowling.

They went on a Sunday afternoon the next week, just the two of them. Lydia left her gloves in his car on purpose and he reached out on his own and held her hand on the way inside. She swung their hands and leaned against his shoulder in the line for shoes, ridiculously blissful. It was idiotic, to be so happy about something like a boring, normal date, but she hadn’t been out like this in what seemed like years. And there was no one she knew currently at risk of dying while she was here. While they talked about nothing his thumb rubbed over the back of her hand.

Lydia knew she was smiling stupidly at Parrish while he painstakingly picked out the ugliest ochre ball they had in the building. He noticed her looking and smiled, ducked his head. She reached around him to snag a red ball, leaning in against his back just enough to be noticed, and walked backwards towards their lane. She was only in low heels today, but she swayed into them a little on purpose. Just because.

“I should let you know, I’m actually pretty good at this.”

“You are? I used to be ok I think, but it’s been a while.”

“I haven’t had the chance in…” and it finally hit her just when she’d last been here, “wow, almost two years. And that was for a horrible group date disaster with Allison and Scott.”

Parrish had a particular expression when she’d confused him and he wasn’t sure he wanted to ask. She’d seen it a lot last summer.

Lydia rolled her eyes. “No, I never dated Scott-and-Allison. We were all here with Jackson before he left.”

“Oh.”

He always sounded sympathetic when she mentioned Jackson. She hadn’t told Parrish that much about him, not like she had talked about Allison. It didn’t seem really fair, to spend time talking about a past boyfriend with her current… something. Boyfriend didn’t seem like the right word, both too much and too little. This was their first real date, but Jordan already knew her better than Jackson ever had.

She got a strike and a spare her first turn, not a terrible start. Parrish was frowning faintly at the scoreboard when she sat down next to him, but he didn’t look surprised. Or resentful.

He got a washout his first try, and only eight pins down by the second. She leaned against his side at the ball return before she took her next turn, two strikes this time before her last try drifted too far left.

When she turned he was looking around the bowling alley, quick flicks of his eyes, assessing. It was only when he did this that he looked like he’d been a soldier for a while. There was one older couple three lanes over and what looked like a few middle school kids in the tiny arcade. Otherwise the place was deserted.

She found out why he’d been looking her next turn, when just as she pulled her arm back to bowl Jordan darted up behind her and kissed the side of her neck. Lydia startled, the ball wobbled down the lane and she ended up with a split and no extra turn to fix it. 

She glared. Parrish blinked at her from three feet away as though he hadn’t done anything at all.

His next turn she stood beside him and stared like she might try something, but he bowled a spare, six and four. He was better every turn, his hands remembering what to do.

Her next turn she shoved him back first, palm to his chest. He was trying not to grin at her, trying to act surprised, keep his pretty green eyes wide like he was hurt.

“Don’t give me that look. You know why!” she said, and he laughed but stayed back.

His next turn Lydia tucked her fingers through the belt loops on his dark jeans and tugged. He let go of the ball too soon, only took out three pins. When he turned around she was off to one side, fixing a hairpin. He stepped back grinning, flicked his fingers towards his palms like he’d done when they were in the woods. Bring it.

It, escalated.

It may have gotten slightly out of hand. One turn Parrish slid an arm around her, palm pressed high on her belly where she could feel the heat of it through her blouse, as if he was just watching her. Then his turn she tucked a hand into the back pocket of his jeans. When he licked her neck she actually dropped the bowling ball with a bang. Suddenly, somehow, she was practically hanging along his back, both arms around his neck and trying to stifle her laughter in a fold of his jacket before they got kicked out, while he tried to ignore her. He put the ball right in the gutter.

She tucked their score sheets carefully into her bag as they left, even though the numbers were abysmal.

“Oh do not tell me what I scored. That got ridiculous. I can’t believe I did that.”

After he’d put the ball in the gutter his very last turn he’d sworn loudly enough it echoed and had clapped a hand over his mouth. Lydia’d had to sit down she’d laughed so hard. They’d left a bit quickly after that.

She patted his leg, then sort of left her hand there while he drove. “I can assure you neither of us made it to 200 points. Or, anywhere even close.”

“Yikes.”

He drove her home, pulled up against the sidewalk a block away from her house, right where he’d picked her up that morning. Parrish scratched a nail along the steering wheel. Lydia found she had no idea what to say. He didn’t have to rush back to work. They’d been quiet most of the drive, but it had been comfortable until now.

Jordan moved a hand to cover hers, still resting on his leg. “Thank you.”

“What for?”

“This was all your idea, to go do something normal, something fun. It was nice to spend time with you that wasn’t life and death, or me abusing my break time.”

She wasn’t sure how him taking an extra five minutes occasionally was any big deal. “So maybe we should do it again sometime.”

Jordan smiled. “I’d like that.”

Lydia quickly kissed the corner of his mouth and got out of the car before she gave into the urge to do something really stupid in his backseat.

But she heard him roll down his window and before he’d even finished saying her name she was kissing him, her fingers raking back through his hair. His hand was cradling her face and he licked hesitantly into her mouth. She dug her nails in, sucked at the tip of his tongue and felt him gasp.  

She turned and kissed his palm as she pulled away.

He licked his lips and Lydia felt herself flush. “I’ll see you Tuesday?” he said.

“Of course.”

The neighbors would see if she skipped down the sidewalk home. No one over ten should be seen doing such a thing. So she didn’t.

But she felt like it.

*

Usually when Lydia showed up somewhere unexpected late at night it was banshee related, but when Parrish opened his door around midnight on a Sunday Lydia’s eyes were focused, she had a small duffle bag over her shoulder, and a frustrated, red eyed scowl on her face.

“Lydia! What are you doing here? Is something…”

She shook her head. “Sorry. Kira’s still gone and I wasn’t sure what Malia was doing today and my Mom and Dad have been screaming about the money for two hours so I climbed out my window, and it was too far to walk to the lake house even if I could still sleep there, and I know it’s your one night off…”

“Hey! Hey Lydia, it’s ok. Come in? Please?”

She bit her lip and visibly made herself smooth out her expression before she stepped inside and let him close the door.

“I’m really sorry about this Parrish, I’m sure you were in the middle of something.” She reached up and smoothed back her hair. The fog had made it tacky, strands clinging to her neck and face.

Parrish shrugged. “Yeah, catching up on The Walking Dead, impossible to interrupt. You’re not any trouble Lydia.” The way she flushed and ducked her head made him think he’d somehow said something very right again.

“Still, it’s hardly fair of me to show up unannounced. I brought some reading along, so I can let you get back to it.”

“Schoolwork for your one class?”

She glowered. It was cute. “Particle physics actually.”

“Oh, of course.”

She watched him closely, like she was waiting for him to say something else, but when he reached for her bag she let him carry it over next to his couch without comment.

“I just couldn’t stand it anymore, but this is so not how I pictured sleeping over here the first time.”

Parrish wasn’t sure if he was supposed to hear that or not, so he ignored it, tried to not look busy hiding the dirty dishes in his kitchen. He’d tried making himself stir fry again, but it was never as good without the deep fried chicken pieces available just two blocks from here. Or really, what he always hoped was real chicken, but it was too tasty to care.

“Would you like something to drink?” he asked.

She leaned an elbow on his kitchen counter, grinned and watched him try to subtly shove what must be a few days’ worth of dirty dishes into the sink. He could be such a _boy_ sometimes. Stiles and Scott had come by the station once last summer with most of an already cool and congealing pizza and he’d actually eaten it with them while they were going through the Bestiary. “Don’t suppose you have any wine?”

“No I don’t, and if I did I wouldn’t share! You’re not legal to drink yet.”

Lydia rolled her eyes. “Please. My Mom’s been taking me with her to wine tastings since I was twelve.”

Her smile faded and she moved to peer out his back window at the dark woods, taking her hair down as if it were a distraction before turning back to him with a wicked smile.

“So what’s your poison Deputy? You don’t strike me as a whiskey kinda guy.”

He gave up on the dishes, leaned on the counter across from her and played along as she blinked up at him through her lashes. “A nice, cold beer never goes to waste, but I’m really a spiced rum and coke kinda guy.”

She smiled, one of the ones with only half her mouth and a sweet look in her eyes. “That sounds more like you.”

“Are you, worried about them?” he asked quietly. Parrish wasn’t sure if this was a situation where someone might take a swing, or the kind where the parents were too angry to bother with how the volume was affecting their kids and everyone else around them. He didn’t want to have to come out and say it like that though. She was obviously already pretty upset, even though they were both pretending not to acknowledge that.

But of course she knew exactly what he was really asking and turned away.

“No, they won’t _do_ anything. They never actually _do_ anything. It’s more that Dad did his best to wash his hands of everything financially in the divorce, and since Grandma’s lake house isn’t selling quickly, his mother’s house that we’ve ended up with, Mom wanted to talk to him about money again. Like that’s going to accomplish anything. I’m over 18, he’s not going to do anything about it. He didn’t even get back to her about my last hospital bill, or come and see me this time.” 

Parrish sat down opposite her on his couch. She'd curled up so tightly against the arm she barely took up half a cushion. “I guess you guys weren’t close?”

Lydia smiled, but it wasn’t a happy one. “I wasn’t not-close with him before. I was closer with Mom and Grandma, but I was only twelve when things started going sour, and he worked away a lot. Now…”

She turned her face away from him and he held very still.

“I think I remind him of his mother now, and he never really liked her,” she said faintly.

“Oh.” Parrish wasn’t particularly close with any of his family, was perhaps closest with his sister, but he liked all of them and they basically stayed in touch, even if he’d never really been able to explain why he’d wanted to move out here. Or anything that had happened since.

Parrish sometimes thought he’d kind of been on the good side of average in every way until the Hellhound moved into his reanimated corpse.

“When they split up, he told me to pick where to go. I didn’t want to move out of my room, didn’t want to change schools or anything. I didn’t know he was going to take it so personally. But we’ve gotten more and more distant ever since. He does still answer my texts sometimes.”

“I’m sorry.” What else was there to say.

“No, no I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to just tell you all of that. This isn’t anyone else’s problem.”

“It’s not a problem when you need someone to talk to.”

Lydia didn’t say anything, but her stiffly curled limbs loosened and she reached down to rummage in her bag. “You finish your show. I’m going to sit here and read if that’s alright.”

“Ok. Not a fan of the Walking Dead?” he asked.

“Mm, I don’t watch much tv. Stiles and Kira are the only other ones who really keep up with shows. She was always trying to get Malia and I to watch Doctor Who. Scott’s never even seen Star Wars.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope. Even I’ve seen all of them once through sheer exposure. Try mentioning it to Stiles sometimes, he could rant about that for hours.” She bent her knees up in front of her and balanced her book on them. Parrish caught sight of equations in it with more symbols than he could hope to recognize and bit the inside of his cheek so he didn’t smile.

“I was just going to finish this episode and go to bed. The sheets are clean today, so you take the bed. I’ll sleep out here tonight.”

“Hm. No, I’ll sleep out here.”

“Lydia, it’s…”

“Parrish it is your bed and you are _much_ taller than me. You’re not sleeping out on the couch.”

Parrish pressed his lips together tight for a moment. “Ok. I’m not going make a problem out of it. Bed’s yours if you’d rather sleep there. I’ve slept on the couch a lot, it won't bother me. I only bought the bed a few months ago.”

She peered at him over the top of her book. “You moved in here with just the couch didn’t you.”

Jordan grinned. “I really wish I could deny that. But I kept not getting around to it for way too long.”

They didn’t talk much more, but she tucked her toes under his leg as she read. He could feel the chill of them. He let himself rest a hand lightly on her ankle as he got sleepier.

It wasn’t awkward somehow, going to sleep. He dug out the spare blanket and a clean sheet, took the other pillow he never used off his bed and out to the couch while she used his tiny bathroom. Parrish was turning off the lights and checking doors and windows when she came back out in pink, flannel pajama pants and a thin sweatshirt. He’d been about to say goodnight and close his door when she wrapped her arms around his waist and hugged him tight without making a sound, face hidden against his chest.

No matter how many times he noticed how small she really was, catching her wrists in his hands or carrying her out of the woods when she was terrifyingly light and cold, he always forgot again. Her presence in a room was always, greater. Barefoot in the dark of his apartment the top of her head barely reached his collarbones. Jordan cupped the back of her head to kiss her hair but she went up on tiptoe to catch his mouth sweetly.

“Sleep well.”

He wasn’t really surprised later, and not even that much later, when she opened his door, climbed into his bed with him.

“If you really want me to sleep out there I will. You can tell me,” she murmured, laying near the edge of the mattress. 

The blinds were closed. There was no extra car outside for anyone to recognize. No one would know. He should probably care about that more than he did, but he didn't think he'd even care if everyone knew. Parrish finally sighed after a minute. “I don’t.”

He held still and she shifted closer, closer until she was lying barely two inches away and he could feel her breathing warm against his shoulder. 

He blinked at his ceiling for another minute before he gave up, turned on his side and pulled her against him. She wrapped around him like she’d just been waiting for him to make a move, an ankle tucked behind his leg, chilly fingers on his back, her forehead on his chest. He kissed her hair and closed his eyes.

Parrish jolted awake at the sound of tinny music he didn’t own. Someone flailed next to him and the sound stopped with a heavy sigh.

Lydia set her head back on his shoulder and pulled the blanket over her face.

He tugged it back down, trying not to smile too much. “Good morning?”

She groaned, “Sorry, I need to get ready for school. Go back to sleep. You don’t even have to be up yet.”

Jordan turned his face away to yawn. “I could drop you off?”

She smiled, teasing. “Drive me right up to the door in your mom car would you?”

“Hey, that car was a really good deal. At least it was blue.”

“Oh, as long as it's blue. I’ll get Malia to pick me up. She hardly ever loses control of the car anymore.”

He meant to ask exactly what that meant, but then she quickly kissed his chest, right over his heart, and rolled out of bed, taking her bag into his bathroom with her.

He blinked at the closed door. It was like she hadn’t even noticed she’d done anything new, like it was normal.

That would, that would actually be pretty nice.

 


	2. Dualities

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Dualities - S and T. Two forms of matter propagation. Two paths can reach the same destination. The limitations of a vantage point can still perceive the same underlying truth._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter we get Kira back (because screw you canon), have some interesting cafeteria conversations, visit a friend, and earn that M rating. You have been warned. ;)

 

Lydia liked to think about her powers like string theory.

When she heard or saw things, the times she was awake to remember it from the start, it was like slipping sideways out of the real world, away from the three dimensional membrane they all supposedly lived on. Then she was interacting with a dimension entirely, one next to theirs but not really touching, where sound could do impossible things, and suddenly bullet casings could tell her what the bullets had done once they’d left them and a scream could find the dying or disintegrate human flesh.

The Banshee did not move through space or time, just shifted dimensionally. She didn’t predict or see the future, didn’t bend the space time fabric of her universe, just shifted between things that were already right there, just never supposed to touch.

It helped her to make sense of it this way. A much easier thing to contemplate than madness had been.

The other string theory to think about was the Moira, the Fates, Clotho, Lachesis, Atropos, creation and living and ending, threads that traveled and snarled, intertwined and were finally cut.

Being a banshee was less like dealing with fate and more like listening to the ramifications when the strings were plucked. Sometimes she could only hear one snap just before it happened. Sometimes she could hear the shifting twang of an important, upcoming snarl. Sometimes the ache as something was pulled to the breaking point before it was ready. She didn’t create fate, could rarely really change it. Like Lachesis, she measured, observed and calculated. Sometimes she was even able to keep things the way they should be.

The Hellhound was neither Clotho or Atropos, not a counterpart or a parallel but a curve along an asymptote. Infinite and similar and dissimilar, both omens of terrible things without necessarily being terrible things themselves. The Hellhound was callous certainly, but not a force of evil. A wildfire or flood or hurricane could not be evil. A force of nature simply was.

But Jordan Parrish was a good man.

*

The Hellhound may have gone quiet with the Beast and the Dread Doctors dead, but Parrish knew it wasn’t gone. He could feel it clearer now, since the nemeton had shown him things, a low rumble in the back of his head.

(He strongly suspected that if it left he’d die instantly, but that wasn’t something worth thinking about.)

Scott had texted him a week or so after everything was over to suggest they should probably work together on getting him better at shifting between his human body and the physical characteristics that made up the hound. It wasn’t safe to not know. Parrish had agreed, Scott would definitely know more about it than him, and he understood dealing with this stuff was just going to be part of being alive from now on. But they’d never actually picked out a time to do anything. There were other things to take care of.

The station was short-staffed again, Williams still in the hospital and Clarke on desk duty due to her broken ribs. Parrish was picking up as many extra shifts as he could, because it wasn’t fair to expect Cordova to pick up the slack from being short three patrol officers all on his own. Lydia’d told him most of the others were behind at school which really wasn’t a surprise. Things needed to get back to normal.

A lot had happened since the storm in August.

But after a few quieter weeks, Parrish had barely closed his door behind himself and peeled off one boot after another double shift before he heard the metallic buzz of a dirt bike outside. By the time he’d peeled off another boot there was a careful knock on his door.

Malia and Scott stood there with wet clothes and hair still mostly dry from the bike helmets.

Parrish was too tired to think of something reasonable to say. “Are we actually doing this right now?”

Scott shrugged. “Everybody’s caught up at school and we’ve all applied to college now. I didn’t want to make you keep waiting. I know it sucks not really knowing how to do things.”

Malia nodded seriously and Parrish sighed, stifled a yawn. This was more important than sleep and it’s not like they were obligated to help him, none of them ever had been but they’d always helped anyway. “Yeah, sorry, we can do this today. You guys wanna come in?”

“Nope.”

Parrish looked around behind them. Past the metal awning the rain was still coming down steadily, puddles filling the tiny parking lot.

“Uh, it’s still raining. Are you sure you guys don’t want to just come in?” Parrish was on friendly terms with most of his neighbors, his building was mostly busy 30 somethings and old people, but Mr. Thompson two doors down liked to glare at Parrish for some reason, and he glared a lot more when Lydia’d been here so this would probably get extra glaring too.

Malia shook her head. “The rain’s so you won’t start a forest fire if you light up.”

That was a good point. Parrish ducked to hide a yawn. “I need like five minutes to change,” and gulp down the last of this morning’s coffee.

“We’ll be out back,” Scott said and Malia smiled close-mouthed, shut his own front door in front of his face.

They hiked into the woods far enough they shouldn’t be seen. Malia had left her shoes and socks by his back door and he could see why as she ran through puddles and ducked away into the trees and then back inhumanly fast, her legs splashed in mud up to her knees. Her ears were pointed and eyes glowed blue in the dim grey light. Scott walked quietly next to Parrish, but his head ticked to the side as if listening to Malia’s location and he sniffed at every new breeze. It made Parrish realize that this was them when they weren’t trying to look like average humans, that they didn’t feel the need to play perfectly normal around him anymore.

That was a warming thought. He’d gotten used to Lydia not hiding it when she heard something, but he hadn’t realized the others had gotten comfortable around him too.

They stopped when they found a clearing covered in mud instead of dried pine needles and Scott suggested they start with claws.

“It’s not about the speed of the gesture to get your claws out, it’s about how you tense your hand, the ligaments inside. Then you relax and they’ll go back.” Scott’s claws slowly vanished.

“It helps me if I do it faster though.” Malia demonstrated, flicked her right hand out and down faster than Scott then waved the dusky claws tipping her fingers.

Parrish tried it again. Then tried it again a little faster.

“Anything?” Scott asked.

“No.” His nails were still short and completely human. “My fingers feel hot.”

“Maybe you have to be on fire to do anything.” Scott frowned at the damp earth around them. It was another drought year, the fresh damp might not be enough.

“But I can shift my eyes without any fire.”

“Well how does it feel when you do that?” Malia asked.

He thought about the grasp of Lydia’s hands, about adrenalin, the beneath-ground chill of the nemeton reaching out for him. “Warm usually, but not just warm. It’s anticipation. Vigilance.”

They were both staring. “Really? All of that?” Malia said, “I usually just want whatever my problem is to know what they’re dealing with.”

Scott nodded slowly. “It’s a good way to make a statement without actually making a threat. How do things look for you?”

“What do you mean? Lydia told me they’re kind of a flickering orange, but I’ve only actually seen them myself once.” And he’d been way more focused on Gerard’s blowtorch.

Scott blinked and his eyes lit red. “Well with these eyes I see into some infrared. Living things are easier to spot. Like right now, your hands are brighter than the rest of your body, so I guess they actually are hot.”

Malia snorted and Parrish tried not to make a face. Or do something really stupid like blush.

“Also, I can see Kira’s aura with these eyes, but when her eyes are lit she doesn’t see different things like me and Malia or Liam. It’s more of a sign that her power is active than a body part performing a task. I’m still not sure whether the way you physically shift is more like us or like Kira. The stuff you’re able to just _know_ , that’s all Lydia’s stuff and I don’t know anything about helping with that. Never did.” Scott looked sad.

Parrish thought about a lighter in his hand and felt his eyes change, was able to glance around the clearing before he lost focus.

“Did you see anything?”

“Not really? It seemed different when I looked at you compared to the forest, but it wasn’t anything I could actually look at.”

“If that’s a feelings thing you’ll need to talk to Lydia on Thursday,” Malia said.

Parrish’s eyes widened. He’d been careful, making sure Lydia only met him places where people couldn’t watch and get the wrong idea. She hadn’t had a problem with that, would have said something if she had, he knew she would,

“I’m not sure what would help with the fire part of things. Everything when I was doing this was about learning to not shift when I didn’t want to. And your powers don’t seem to be tied to the moon at all,” Scott said.

Parrish pushed up the sleeves of his sopping wet shirt and let his mind drift. His hands started to steam, then glow, then flame started arcing between his fingers. He focused in on his surroundings again and the flames went out. They were staring again. “It’s easier, every time I start it. And it only hurts if something else starts the fire first. If I do it, it only feels really warm. Sort of distant really.”

“Uh, that’s good. Liam still feels kinda bad about setting you on fire. I do too honestly.”

“That was the only way I knew how to shift then. I told you to do it.” Scott was nice enough not to bring up that everyone there had known he was scared shitless to let them do it. That had been beside the point.

“Well, you kind of screamed and thrashed around a bit before the hound woke up and stormed off.”

“Great,” Parrish heard himself say.

“And that was all after you’d set Corey on fire and Theo apparently put a steel pipe through your chest, according to Stiles,” Malia added.

“I did _what_?!” Parrish usually remembered bits and pieces from when the hound was in control, but everything from walking into Eichen House to catching Lydia when she’d started to fall had always been a complete blank.

Scott was grimacing sympathetically. “Look, we all get the hellhound and you aren’t really the same, uh, person? Though that seems better now? You’ve been really cool about everything since the deadpool kinda threw you into this, but you know the hound didn’t care who or what was in its way, just that something was in its way. Corey’s just a bit… skittish about you still.”

“And Mason knew I’d done that? He told me Corey wasn’t talking at the station because he was tired!” Parrish knew the hound had hurt people, knew it in his bones, from the hot water scalds on his colleague’s hands to Stiles’ jeep repairs he’d helped pay for. It was different hearing he’d _set a kid on fire_. Parrish felt sick.

Malia shrugged. “Corey attacked you when Theo told him to even though he knew it was a stupid move. He healed. There’s no reason for him to stay all pissed off about it.”

But Parrish remembered how he’d told the sheriff never ever to tell him what prison Hague had ended up in and didn’t blame Corey at all.

Parrish didn’t see the younger members of the McCall pack around, not like the others. Hayden never came in with Clarke. All the seniors were in and around the station all the time, Scott and Malia trailing in with Stiles at least once a week and Kira had too before she’d left. Lydia kept insisting on bringing him coffee on the nights he worked a double shift and then she’d stay to talk. He was getting used to having that in his week despite himself.

They didn’t get very far with anything in the woods that day, but Parrish practiced, even when he was having the kind of day where he wanted to forget any of this had ever happened to him.

Eventually in January he noticed the claws were getting as easy to bring out and hide again as the eyes had become last fall. They were pitch black, longer and sharper than the werewolf claws Scott had patiently let him examine, wickedly curved. He brought home a scrap piece of steel that had been left near the station, just to see.

His claws shredded right through it.

The teeth, fangs, were still a problem. The sensation when they grew in wasn’t like anything he could describe. It didn’t feel like teeth, maybe somewhat like getting lightly kicked in the shin. If he dreamed of the desert or the nemeton and woke up with them out the only way he’d figured out he could get them to go away was a mouthful of ice.

Parrish was starting to think the hound thought it was _funny_.

*

Kira came back near the end of January.

She literally walked in the school doors with her dad one morning and ran straight into Scott’s open arms. They would have probably stood there and made out until the end of the school day if Kira’s dad hadn’t pulled her away by one backpack strap when the first bell went off.

Lydia tugged Malia towards her first class without going over to her. They could catch up soon enough.

But it was lunch before Lydia and Malia could finally corner Kira in the empty art classroom.

Malia immediately pulled Kira into a hug, breathing in deeply near the nape of the girl’s neck. Malia was unapologetic about monitoring all of their scents in a way Scott would never remember to do or be comfortable with, the difference between bitten and born. Lydia hugged her next, feeling the new, hard muscle in Kira’s narrow shoulders.

Kira hugged her back, smiling sunnily. “It’s so good to see you guys! How’ve you been? Did you have nice Christmases? I know school’s been kinda quiet. But that’s something to be grateful for, really! I mean, after last semester. And the winter before that.”

Malia shrugged, “My dad and I went deer hunting right before Thanksgiving. That was pretty good. And you owe me five bucks. Parrish and Lydia definitely have a thing.”

“Hold up, you guys were betting about me?” Lydia’s voice cracked slightly when it pitched up at the end but no one noticed. Kira was blinking at her wide eyed while Malia was completely unconcerned as usual. It truly was a skill.

Kira looked away after a minute and managed to close her mouth. “Have you talked to Stiles?” she asked Malia gently.

Malia froze. “What? Sure, we talk all the time. I have two classes with him you know.”

Lydia grimaced and shook her head at Kira from where Malia couldn’t see.

Kira slumped with a little pout, but brightened quickly. “Coach even let me back on the Lacrosse team.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, back to a full team member as long as I’m never later to practice ever again ever. He just kept trying to ask about where I got mono from since Scott was totally fine. I think he was actually worried I cheated on him. Coach really does care about him and Stiles.”

Lydia rolled her eyes. “As if that’s the only way to get mono. It’s not actually just a ‘kissing disease’.”

“Yeah, well it’s Coach.” Kira shrugged delicately.

“And nobody here ever actually had mono. So are you back for good? Are you fine now?” and Lydia could tell how much Malia wanted the answer to be yes. She’d tried to make sure and spend more time with Malia with Kira gone and her and Stiles having what could only be called issues, but Malia and Kira had a different friendship. Lydia knew perfectly well you couldn’t substitute in one girl friend for another. That just wasn’t how it worked.

Kira sighed. “I’m better? I probably will go back to them soon, in the summer maybe, when it won’t mess up school. They did help me, and they’re not as awful as they seemed at first? They’re teaching me things I needed to learn faster than I could do on my own. I can’t really describe it. And they wouldn’t want me too. They really prefer being isolated, but one of them kinda understood about school.”

“So the incredibly powerful skinwalkers that live out in the Nevada desert, to whom you owe a debt, let you leave before your debt was paid with no hard feelings so you could finish _high school_ on time?” Lydia finally asked.

Kira pursed her lips wryly. “I did say they were nicer than they seemed. But it’s good it’s just us in here. I need you guys to help me do something this weekend.”

“You’re doing something this weekend besides Scott? And I have a track meet Saturday morning,” Malia said.

That was enough of a change in topic that Kira didn’t even blush about Scott. “Really? That’s great! What are you running? We’re all coming to watch, right?”

“I do the long sprints and hurdles. I’ve just got to be careful not to run too fast. Or get distracted and shift something.”

Shifting by accident had become an issue for Malia again, most likely something to do with taking on the Desert Wolf’s extra bit of power. Lydia knew Scott was starting to think about calling Derek about it. He really should. Portland wasn’t _that_ far away and she knew Derek wouldn’t mind the call. Scott was just fretting for no good reason.

“Lydia, I actually need you to actually do part of this, but I really want you both to come with me.”

“Ok? What is it?”

“I need you to draw me a tattoo.”

They stared. “You’re scared of needles, remember? Remember zapping a hole in a hazmat suit because you’re scared of needles?” Malia said.

Lydia flapped a hand at them before they could get off topic. “I’ll bring you a few valium Kira. What are you getting done that I’m apparently drawing?”

“Something like this.” Kira turned around and lifted her sweater to show them her back, which was covered in crackling orange paint, curving spikes of fire like the fur of a fox.

Three weeks later at the winter formal Kira wore a backless cream dress and Scott’s fingers rested lightly on the dark orange lines of fox fur tattooed down her back.

That night Lydia danced with Kira and Malia a few times, teaching some actual dance steps, but mostly trying to help Kira. Malia was a natural dancer, despite Stiles being a clumsy but appreciative partner, and Kira was hopeless. Scott was eventually able to manage a few real steps, but he and Kira swayed contentedly in place on the edge of the dance floor.

It was a good night. Quiet. Lydia still slipped out early, met Jordan at his apartment still wearing her green party dress and spent two hours teaching him single step swing after beginning with triple step proved far, far too ambitious when he tripped over his tiny coffee table.

*

When Clarke had first come back to work, in mid October when everything had only been over for a matter of days and Parrish was still feeling dazed, she’d pulled him aside in the evidence locker, locked the door behind them and pinned him across from her with a stare he could tell was slightly desperate.

“Hayden told me you and the Sheriff _know_ things, about why she went missing, about why I saw a cloud of smoke around that French guy before he knocked me out.”

Parrish blinked, opened and closed his mouth without saying anything. He should have suspected at least some of his colleagues would put things together, but somehow he’d never given any thought to what he was going to say.

“Look, Parrish, I don’t need the whole story. I don’t need to know why or how you melted your way out of one of our jail cells. Or why you were in there at all. Or why the sheriff seems to be _ok_ with all of that. I don’t need big explanations. I just need you to tell me something.”

“Ok Clarke. What do you want to ask me?”

“Is Hayden ok?”

That wasn’t the question Parrish had been expecting but it really should have been.

“She’s not half as good a liar as she thinks she is. I know something was wrong. I know she packed a bag before she went missing. I know Liam and his friends were involved. I know I found _bloody clothes_ in her laundry. And I know you somehow know more about it than I know.”

Clarke was staring, blocking the door and Parrish had no idea what to say. Not everything that had happened was actually his business to discuss. Clarke knew nothing about the Dread Doctors. He couldn’t really tell her her sister was a werewolf now. Or why.

“Hayden is fine. She’s going to be fine. The reason she went missing, that’s no longer a problem. She’s not in any particular danger right now.”

He saw her shoulders loosen but she still blocked the door.

“And the smoking, glowing guy we had in the station? The one trying to do something to the sheriff? What about that?”

It took Parrish a moment to remember she probably meant the Beast instead of him. “That’s dead. Honestly, I’m not sure it was ever really alive. I wasn’t… awake for everything that happened.”

Clarke squinted at him but didn’t comment. “And no one’s going to come looking for him? No nosy FBI again?”

“No.” There wasn’t even a body to look for but he wasn’t sure how to explain that.

Clarke nodded. “And Hayden’s really fine? Her and Liam, they’re not in trouble? I know his record, but I’ve met that kid. He’s not the kind that’s going to do something, something _awful_ to her. But she still won’t tell me anything. And she always used to tell me everything, ever since I got her back…”

Parrish knew, everyone at the station probably knew really, that Clarke’s mother and Hayden’s father had both been ruled in court as unfit parents three years ago, that Clarke had sole custody now since they had no other family. The sheriff tried to make it easier, made sure Clarke’s schedule worked in a way that let her make sure Hayden got to school ok, that she could be there in the evenings if she didn’t take a double shift. There was a reason people stayed in this department despite all the insanity.

“I think the most important thing I could tell you, Clarke, is Hayden’s never going to reject that kidney. All the meds basically all your pay goes towards? She’s never going to need them again.”

Parrish pretended not to see her start to cry, let her turn around and pretend to cough until her ribs made her stop that.

“Look, anything else you want to know, we should really sit down with Hayden and the sheriff and Scott. I can’t explain much more myself. It wouldn’t really be right.”

Clarke raised an eyebrow. “Scott McCall? Stiles’ friend?”

“Yeah.”

She held up a hand. “Ok. Ok, I don’t need to know right now.” She sniffed, scrubbed the back of one hand across her eyes. “But what about you Parrish? Are you ok now? You locked yourself up for no reason and then you went missing too.”

Parrish let himself smile. “Yeah, I’m actually fine now too.”

She finally stepped aside, let him hold the door for her as they went back to their desks.

“How did you know though, that Lydia Martin was missing? Nobody had called it in.”

No one was in the hallway with them so he said, “I saw it in a dream before I woke up behind the wheel of my car.”

“Ok,” she said slowly. “Is she actually psychic?”

“Not really.” Parrish would let Lydia explain the banshee thing if Clarke ever talked to Hayden about the rest of it.

“Are you?”

“I’m pretty sure I’m not.”

“Ok. I’m done asking awkward questions now. Promise!”

Clarke had been a good coworker before that, a good deputy, meticulous about the details and she never took any shit off anybody, and they’d been friendly being the two youngest deputies in the office by far.

After that they’d been more like friends.

*

Lydia’d brought the bow to the grave again. She brought birthday flowers too, but she brought the bow here instead of the room in the lake house. Maybe it would help to be nearer by, when she plucked the string. And she liked to visit once a month. It helped.

There was still a gap in her skull, not an open wound, not like it had been at Eichen, but Lydia suspected the next time she heard something it would work very differently.

She’d already caught Allison up on college applications, how the rest of the pack were doing, how things had worked out with Malia’s family, that Kira was back and doing better. Lydia’d never brought up the Dread Doctors. Why worry Allison if she could actually hear all of this?

“You’d be so proud of Scott, Allison, who he’s grown into. I don’t know how you’d even stand it. He has all A’s and B’s this semester. I know you remember how he was with school after Peter first bit him. He’s doing so well. He and Kira couldn’t be any cuter to each other. And he’s good with Liam and Hayden, the way he was with Isacc.”

Lydia sighed. She heard nothing. The string twanged and the wood was warm in her hands but there was nothing else.

“I wish I could tell you something about Isaac, but we’ve never heard anything about how he is or where he is. He’s never contacted Scott. The only thing your dad ever said was that he was ok, but that could mean anything. I’m sorry love.” 

There was only a tiny sliver of moon tonight. A car went down the road but she’d worn her black coat and Allison’s black hat. No one should be able to spot her. Lydia plucked the string and only heard the twang.

“The thing is, the thing I never told any of you, I knew when I first saw you that you were special. I _heard_ it. And then there you were, everything I wasn’t and never tried to be, kind and genuine and _strong_. I knew I’d love you before I even knew I knew how.”

Twang.

“I always thought I was just a good judge of character but I think there was always some of the banshee part of me that was awake, even before Peter bit me. I could hear the potential on Scott and the rot in Jackson even when he loved me and how much safer I was near Parrish long before that made any kind of logical sense.”

Twang.

“I wish I knew what you thought about all of this.”

She heard nothing. Lydia had never really held out much hope that she would.

*

After two months of excellent kisses, late night coffees, and a few very refreshingly normal dates Lydia was starting to get impatient and starting to seriously doubt that Parrish would ever make a move to do something more together than kiss. Not that it wasn’t wonderful that he would kiss her first now, not that his hands on her shoulders or her face weren’t a delight, but she hadn’t had time or occasion to have sex in months. Actual months, almost an entire year now, and that was completely ridiculous. She’d gone through so many batteries in the last couple months.

So she waited until they were kissing in his apartment one evening and slid her hand down along the front of his pants.

He yelped, hilariously high pitched, and she rubbed her palm along him and half hard she could already tell he was going to feel wonderful.

Then his fingers were around her wrist, pulling her hand away and he was actually blushing. “Um, Lydia, what was that?”

“That was it been a very nice past two months and I’m free for the next several hours if not the whole night?”

She rocked forward on his lap a little and he swallowed hard enough she could hear it. “Um, Lydia, I thought we…”

She put her fingers on his lips. “Let’s make this clear. I’m not waiting for Valentine’s day or anything similar, I’m definitely not waiting till I’m nineteen, I don’t even feel like waiting till next week. I’ve already been waiting for this for more months then you even know about and have you _ever_ looked in a mirror Jordan?”

“Oh,” he mumbled against her fingers.

“Oh?”

“I guess I was waiting too.”

“For what?”

He grinned, and _oh_ that was a new smile. “That.”

He kissed her, arms wrapping tight and one hand skimming up the back of her dress, another stroking up into her loose hair. She leaned into it, clung to his shoulders and nipped sharply at his mouth which made him gasp. She squeaked when he picked her up, hands hot on the bare undersides of her thighs and as soon as her back hit the wall she was clawing off his shirt to get at skin. Her nails caught on the curve of his shoulders and he growled against her throat, pressed against her harder while they kissed against the wall and the angle of his hips between her legs was _just_ right.

Her dress was slipping off one shoulder. She shook it loose, raked her fingers roughly through his hair. Half her bra was showing now, thin blue lace. Jordan ducked away from her lips, fastened his mouth around the peak of her breast, giving the kind of slow, hard sucks that curled her toes, made her legs weak. Her nails dug into his shoulders, her head tipped back, already gasping for air.

Jordan seemed content to stay like that until she started shoving down the back of his pants with her heels, pulled his head up to kiss her again. Jordan wouldn’t put her down, stumbled into his bedroom and kicked the door closed before he dropped her onto his bed from a few inches up and crawled over her, pushing her dress up and kissing over her bare belly which made her want to squirm. She leaned up on her elbows right when he started dragging her panties down her legs with his teeth.

“ _Jordan_.”

He glanced up, eyes dark, but said nothing, pulled until her panties were even with where he was braced on his palms then carefully tugged them down over one foot.

His hands wrapped loosely around her ankles. “Would you leave the heals on?”

He looked so hopeful she laughed, nodded, and she was only wearing the blue ones. Lydia’d have to wear the pink heels sometime and _really_ blow his mind. But he was dragging his teeth up the inside of her thigh. She clamped one hand down over her own mouth and tangled the other in his sheets. She could smell him on them.

She felt the bed shift and lips suddenly brushed over her fingers, mouthing hotly at them until they relaxed enough he sucked two inside. Lydia shuddered and watched as he dragged his tongue over her fingertips.

He was watching her face. “Why cover your mouth like that?”

“I’m afraid I might scream.” Which was a luxury she probably couldn’t afford anymore.

Jordan smiled, kissed her softly and she curled up off the bed to chase his mouth as he sat up. Then his hands were around her ribs, lifting and helping her turn over so she was kneeling up on the edge of the bed, face down by her elbows.

He pressed a damp kiss to her shoulder, “Feel free.”

Oh that was hot. Then he kissed her back, the top of her ass and oh he was really going to. Lydia whined into his mattress at the first drag of his tongue over her folds. He licked hard between them, suckled at her clit and hummed low in his throat. After that she lost track of everything.

Jordan was _good_ at this.

She could hear herself, high pitched gasping, as he explored every inch of her with his tongue, licking hard under her clit and pressing inside with his tongue just enough to really feel it. She came so hard so fast she forgot to even breathe, reaching back to clutch his fingers while she moaned around her own wrist.

Jordan kept his tongue buried deep as he could while she came, enough to feel her insides spasm around it, taste that extra burst of sweetness. He’d let himself imagine doing this once or twice, but now he could memorize the scent of her, now he’d heard how she _sounded_. She was leaning heavier against his hands around her thighs, and his hips kept twitching up against nothing but everything had become secondary to the feel of her on his mouth.

Jordan didn’t let her catch her breath, sucked her clit back between his lips almost before she was done coming. She tried to reach back enough to get her fist in his hair, but couldn’t reach, caught his shoulder with her fingertips before fisting both hands in the sheets and rocking back against his mouth, his hands around her thighs the only thing keeping her steady. She keened when he curled two fingers inside her, bit off a shriek when she felt everything tense again, came against his tongue lapping over her clit.

Lydia blinked, rolled up onto her side which felt like a huge effort, the muscles in her legs still twitching, breathing still shaky. She could see Jordan’s shoulders shifting rhythmically though his wet face was hidden against the side of her thigh. Oh, he was stroking himself with her right here, that was hardly fair.

“No, don’t you dare. Come here. Give me that,” she murmured, which barely made sense as a sentence but she was going to be so disappointed if she didn’t get to finally put her hands on him. Jordan was giving her that same rapt stare when he would wait for a kiss, but he shifted up closer, let her shove his hands aside and wrap hers around his flushed dick.

He tried to keep his eyes open, watch her, but they’d gotten too worked up too fast and she honestly had no idea how long he’d gone down on her, could feel him shivering already. He came with a ragged gasp, face shoved in against her ribs, the hand that had been on her belly flexing, a slow, taught writhe against her side. She slowed her pace but kept her grip tight while he panted through it, finally hissed, caught her wrist and pushed her hand away.

The room was getting dim as the sun lowered behind the trees, no sound but their heavy breathing.

Lydia finally gave in to the temptation to lick her fingers while he was watching, eyes on his face.

Jordan groaned at the sight, pulled her close to kiss her, belly to sticky belly on the rumpled sheets. He was naked, could feel a few stinging little scratches on his shoulders that he knew he was going to admire in the mirror later. She somehow still had her dress on, rucked up under her breasts, hair still half pinned up.

Lydia pulled away a loose hair pin and tossed it away onto the floor.

Jordan sighed heavily, sat up and started unbuckling the heels she’d almost forgotten she still had on. Her legs were still completely limp. God that had been good. She rubbed her palm over his back. “How the hell did I keep my hands off you the last six months?”

Jordan buried his face against the curve of her neck and shook with silent laughter.

*

Lydia woke up to the chirping of her phone alarm and her phone not where she usually left it.

When she blinked herself awake she was alone in Jordan’s bed, naked curled under the blanket. The empty space next to her was only slightly warm and her dress was still on the floor where they’d tossed it last night. It was almost dawn, greyish light creeping in.

She quickly washed her face and mouth in the bathroom, hummed through fewer scales to warm up her touchy throat than she usually made herself bother with, pulled on yesterday’s dress, crumpled but clean enough, and panties but skipped the bra for now.

Jordan had pulled on jeans but no shirt, was slicing tomatoes in his tiny kitchen. She stepped up behind him, slid her arms around his waist and leaned her cheek against his warm back. He murmured something like good morning, raised a hand to cradle her wrist. A piece of tomato rolled onto the floor.

“I thought we had time to have breakfast. The high school doesn’t really start till 8:30, right? It’s one of the late start ones.”

Lydia nodded with her cheek against his back.

He turned around within the loose circle of her arms, raised a hand to cradle her face. Lydia tried not to look like she was still half asleep.  She failed.

Jordan laughed, kissed the top of her head. “Do you need coffee babe?”

She gave in to the urge to burrow her face in against his chest and close her eyes. “Please.”

“Ok.” He wrapped his hands around her ribs, lifted her up to sit on his tiny kitchen counter. It was cold against her thighs and she watched him put half a mug of milk in the microwave.

Jordan paused reaching for the eggs, stepped between her splayed legs and she twinned her arms around his shoulders, leaned her cheek against his as his arms wound tight around her waist. Her sex was still plump and warm between her legs from last night. She felt it twitch as it pressed snugly against Jordan’s flat belly. He sighed deeply, swayed them a little which was so not helping her wake up. She wanted to drag him back to bed and skip school. When he kissed under her chin she squirmed, shoved him away but he was grinning, silly this morning.

“Here. Close as you can get to latte, one sugar, with a drip coffee maker.”

Lydia sipped it, hid a yawn, watched him go back to slicing tomatoes.

“Of course you’d really be a morning person,” she finally grumbled. Jordan only hummed happily and ignored her.

Jordan fried eggs and tomato slices with butter and basil while Lydia sat up on the counter next to him and sipped her coffee. They ate with their bare feet tangled together under the table and she kissed him goodbye at the sunny threshold of his open front door.

By the time she went home to change she was a few minutes late to her first class but it was totally worth it.

*

Lydia sat down at their corner of the cafeteria with a heartfelt sigh, still too cold outdoors to use their picnic table yet. It was frito pie day, so there was nothing worth eating but apples and milk, but she didn’t even care. Breakfast had been delightful. Stiles was holding up biology flashcards for Scott while the alpha shoveled in his frito pie like it might walk away. Which, actually could be a possibility now that she’d considered it. Kira flashed her an awkward little smile as she poked at her pb&j and leaned against Scott’s shoulder. Kira had always been the pickiest eater of them all. Lydia’d never expected to ever hear anyone describe chicken as ‘too chickeny’.

Malia suddenly slapped a hand down on the table. “Seriously Lydia, how long did you guys have sex last night? I can barely smell my lunch over all your happy happy hormones.”

Out of the corner of her eye Stiles dropped his milk carton in his lap.

“Malia!”

“What? You were thinking it too Kira.”

“But I wasn’t going to say anything!” Kira hissed, blushing like it hadn’t been Lydia she’d called for sex advice before the first time her and Scott went all the way. Scott blinked slowly at her like he was just realizing he’d missed something.

Apparently even this mess wasn’t going to make a dent in her mood, so Lydia merely smiled. “Definitely for more than an hour, and thanks for asking in front of everyone sweetheart.”

Malia shrugged, supposedly helping Stiles try and pat his pants dry but probably just putting her hands in his lap in public while she could get away with it.

“Wait, wait Parrish?! But, he’s old!”

Everyone stopped and leaned forward a bit to look at Liam. Hayden stared determinedly down at the table next to him while Mason openly clapped a hand over his face and groaned. Corey was no longer actually visible.

Lydia slowly raised an eyebrow.

Liam cringed. “Sorry? It’s just, isn’t it weird?”

“How is it weird?”

“Seriously Malia…”

“It’s not weird. The Hellhound so also Parrish is very powerful, he’s not at risk from most supernatural threats. He’s protective of you and very social with others so that’s a plus. He won’t cause problems in a pack and can obviously keep threats away from you. Your powers are complimentary to each other so you can get a lot done together. He’s strong and healthy and has attractive features. All of your offspring will be healthy and pretty and very likely to all survive to adulthood. How’s him being a few years older more important than all of that? He’s basically prime mate material.” Malia nodded and then calmly ate another fry.

Well.

Lydia had never and would never look at it that way, but Malia wasn’t actually wrong about any of that.

Stiles huffed. “So that’s the thought process then, utility?”

“Yes. It’s important. And other people do it too, I googled it myself.” Malia

She watched him scrub a hand over his eyes. “Well I’m confused then,” Stiles muttered.

Malia frowned. “Why?”

“What do you mean why? About wherever the hell _this_ ever came from,” Stiles said bitterly and Lydia’d never known where his incredibly warped self-concept had ever come from but it was corrupting that conversation.

Malia glared. “Yeah, why? Your instincts are always right. You’re always the first of us to figure the problem out and you’re always willing to do whatever needs to be done whether you think it’s good or not. And you were nice to me. I didn’t make a _mistake_ Stiles.”

Her voice turned plaintive and the expression on Stiles face while he looked at Malia was truly heart wrenching. Everyone stared. The moment stretched like a held breath and then they were kissing, hands clutching at hair, right there in the middle of the cafeteria like there was no one else in the room until Coach Finstock stormed up behind Stiles and blew his whistle for an impressive 40 seconds. That was officially the end of their ‘we didn’t actually break up but we’re not doing anything together or having any significant conversations’ phase then. Finally.

Lydia was going to have to remind herself to do something nice at their next math homework evening, maybe cupcakes this time. There was that new bakery over on Eldarica Street. Malia was always especially happy when one of them brought her something to eat. It made the coyote part of her feel loved.  

*

Lydia was taping up a string of tiny, pearly plastic hearts around Allison’s gravestone. It was barely February, but the plastic would last all month. She’d already scattered the petals of the white carnations for her birthday around and tossed the wilted stems away into the trees. The quarter moon was more than enough to see by.

“So I should probably tell you more about Jordan since we’re together together now.”

It was too early in the year for crickets. In the silence Lydia could hear the shushing of her own heartbeat.

“I’d tell you how wonderful the sex was, but you’d just hide under a pillow and throw something at me.” Allison had always been hilariously demure when they’d talk about sex, even when Lydia was telling her, by request even, how to give a good blowjob or why she should buy a vibrator.

She sat in the crunchy grass facing the stone, eyes half closed. “You know, he actually made us breakfast the next morning? And we ate it together with our feet touching under the table and everything. It was exactly the kind of thing I’d make faces at when we’d watch romcoms.”

Lydia knew she’d used to enjoy those, but she couldn’t quite think why anymore. She’d liked being able to make Jackson do something he didn’t like in a way that was relatively harmless. She’d loved it all that one summer when Allison would come over late at night, climb in her window like some super spy with ice cream or bottles of pink lemonade in her backpack and they’d watch them in Lydia’s room and make fun of all the lines.

(How had she been gone a year? How had it only been a year before?)

Lydia plucked up a blade of grass. “He’s so pretty. You’re rolling your eyes at me right now, but I’m not just talking about nice muscles. He has the greenest eyes and pretty, dark lashes and the tips of his fingers are almost delicate. I never used to notice that stuff.”

“I think the only thing I could tell you that would really matter is… you remember, how you described being with Scott to me in your car that one time, all the longing and all the joy. Anticipation without any doubt of fulfillment. Those aren’t the words you used of course, but I could see it on your face. And I had no idea how to even _imagine_ how that felt. I’d never even pictured love like that. And I know it made you sad.”

Lydia crumbled the brittle grass between her fingers and smiled sadly.

“I get it now.”

In the quiet something petal soft and cold and small brushed against her cheek and Lydia felt her own heart stop.

*

Lydia was constantly surprised over the next couple weeks by how much she genuinely liked blowing Jordan. Of course she was good at doing it, if Lydia was going to do something she was going to do it _well_. And it’d been fun sometimes before, having someone desperate, attention all on her and then sauntering away after with her makeup still perfect, but this was different. And not just because the first time she’d tried to suck him he’d _turned her down_.

Jordan made these _noises_ , little breathy sounds and choked off moans and his eyes fluttered shut. One of his big hands always ended up in her hair, running it between his fingers and mussing it back and forth but he’d never ever pulled it. She liked kissing up along his slender legs, liked resting her hands on his sides to feel him twitch and shiver, liked the shape of him on the inside against her cheek, didn’t even dislike the taste of him the first time she sucked him bare. Not one bit.

Now she pulled off him, careful to make that obscene wet popping sound and kissed his stomach. She had him up against his own front door and only half out of his uniform because it had been months and she still hadn’t heard from Stanford or Cal Tech and was wondering how much longer she could really wait before she got back to Princeton about whether she was going to attend or not, and whether she was making a huge mistake with her life, because was she seriously considering ignoring her chance at MIT and for what? Friendship and love?

She was. But she felt a whole lot more certain about things right now.

She dragged slick parted lips along the length of him to hear him gasp, kissed his belly again, let her breasts rub up against his thighs through her shirt and he arched towards her. “One day, I’m going to get you to let me do this in your squad car,” she purred.

His eyes blinked open and he immediately shook his head. “Oh my God no way, Lydia please…”

She slid her palm around to his cute ass, dug her nails in and sucked him back into her mouth. His head hit the door with a thud.

Well, she’d get him to let her at least once.

*

Valentines was on a Thursday, Parrish’s latest shift day, and there’d been some issue with an eighteen wheeled truck on the highway yesterday so they didn’t even have time to meet for coffee.  He texted her Happy Valentines so she’d see it when she got to school. She sent back three of the red lipstick kiss print emoji then shoved her phone down in her bag before anyone could see or she could think about it too hard.

It wasn’t like she was actually _upset_ that they couldn’t do something for the day. Jordan had an actual career to worry about and getting upset about not celebrating every little holiday was something a child did.

She could admit she was a bit disappointed she wouldn’t get to see him _at all_ , but she always was when he had too much work for late night coffee with her.

Malia thought the entire concept of Valentine’s Day was incredibly stupid, and had been saying so all week with increasing vigor every time she saw more pink and red and white hearts up in the hallways. “I thought that was just a dumb little kid thing, you know, you bring the little ugly cards for the whole class and eat candy and at some point everybody stops doing that,” she scowled, Allison’s old blue, knitted hat tugged down over her ears.

Lydia had found through trial and error that Malia didn’t particularly like chocolate, wasn’t as big of a candy fan as the rest of the pack in general, probably something to do with her previous woodland diet, but she’d somehow picked up right where she’d left off eight years ago with a fixation on cherry coke. Lydia would always pick pastries over candy herself, but it wasn’t like that was the point of the holiday. Flowers or some small jewelry were equally acceptable traditions, dinner, something to share sweetness about.

All of those things were mostly lost on Malia. Stiles had been looking more and more frantic every time Lydia saw him this week.

Kira was already happily crunching her way through a box of candy hearts as they sat in the bleachers. She was still in her practice uniform though thankfully the fox, of course, hadn’t broken a sweat. “Scott’s taking me out to dinner, someplace nice, just the two of us, and he won’t tell me where,” she said excitedly, dark eyes bright and cheeks flushed pink from more than the chilly air. Lydia patted her knee.

Malia threw up her hands in disgust and leapt over the railing to the sidewalk four feet below, striding away towards the parking lot through the crunchy grass. Lacrosse practice was basically over anyway.

But Friday morning Malia and Stiles walked into school sweetly holding hands, which they almost never did, both too energetic in their movements usually, and Malia pulled him into a kiss in the middle of the hallway, right where the most people would see, her fingers mussing his hair in a way that would make it painfully obvious to anyone with eyes just why it was messy.

Lydia walked up behind her as Stiles stumbled up the stairs towards his first class, AP American History, looking vacantly happy. “So. Have a nice night?”

Malia was almost glowing with happiness. “We had _deer_. Stiles found somewhere to get deer sausage and he cooked it for me _and_ mac and cheese and then we went upstairs and he put a bunch of glow sticks in the bath tub and you know, the bubble stuff, and we turned all the lights out and he _washed my hair_ for me.”

Malia made a little high pitched yip of uncontainable delight and turned to rummage in her locker.

Kira had walked up at the start of that explanation and was staring open mouthed over Lydia’s shoulder. “Wow,” she said.

Malia beamed in their general direction.

“That sounds wonderful dear.” Lydia patted Malia’s shoulder and caught Kira’s arm on their way to AP Bio.

“So. Where did Scott take you last night?”

Kira bounced and scrunched up her face with happiness. “We went out for sushi and had normal California rolls with a normal amount of wasabi. Then we went to that old arcade over on Oak Ave, and then Scott’s mom had a late shift, so we, uh, yeah. That.”

“Aww,” Lydia cooed at her and Kira blushed and ducked her head like she always did.

“Ug. I had to sneak in this morning. How about you? Did you and Parrish do anything nice Lydia?”

Lydia flicked her hair back over one shoulder as they reached their seats. “Oh, no need to worry about grown up things.” She actually wasn’t sure what to say, but teasing would do.

Scott held up a folder to quickly kiss Kira hello behind. Then Kira stuck her tongue out at Lydia behind Scott’s back. Lydia flipped open her textbook while biting back a smile. Botany was a nice change of pace from experimental genetics.

Lydia came across Stiles in the north stairwell later and they both stopped on the empty landing.

His hair was still a mess and she could see at least one hickey under his shirt collar. Stiles started to flush. “Good plan,” she eventually said. Providing an effortless meal and then time spent alone tenderly grooming, even though glow sticks had apparently been involved, Stiles couldn’t have done much better. Lydia knew he’d understand her.

Stiles ticked his chin up in a jerky nod. “Yeah, I figured out I’d probably done ok after round three. If you’ll excuse me, Lydia, I’m going to go sleep in the library so I don’t pass out during lacrosse practice.”

She reached out to pat his shoulder on his way by, but thought better of it, curled her fingers away. Lydia knew how Malia was.

That Sunday Lydia and Parrish decided to try cooking dinner, even though neither of them were particularly good cooks. Jordan boiled pasta and tore up salad greens while she made her dad’s red sauce, as close as she could remember it anyway. It was never quite right, but Jordan said it was good when she held up the spoon for him to lick, kissed her cheek.  

They ate curled together on his couch with plates on their laps. There was a marathon of some colorized World War II documentary on and they watched it idly, talking over idiotic commercials. Lydia didn’t mind the material. Allison had genuinely liked military history, not just because of her family. Jordan watched the old footage with a particular focus but completely ignored whoever was talking. Lydia set her empty plate on his cluttered coffee table and leaned along his side with her head on his shoulder. His arm wrapped around her back, palm curving around her hip. She tried not to let herself get drowsy since she couldn’t stay the night. It was looking to be a busy week.

“You never thought about being a pilot? You’re plenty smart enough.”

“Absolutely not! You’ve only got seconds up there if anything goes wrong, that is not enough time to react. No way.”

Lydia sat up away from him to stare. “Jordan, sweetheart, you were in bomb disposal. Was it that much more relaxing?”

He rolled his eyes. “At least I could pretend I could run for it if I had too. Our usual gear was actually too bulky to really run in, but I didn’t have to jump out of anything.”

She curled back along his side and felt him nuzzle her braided hair. This was nice, comfortable. She would have made fun of doing something like this two years ago, but right now it seemed impossible to be worried about anything. Lydia could get used to that.

Jordan got up and started rummaging through the jars of screws and wires on his kitchen counter right before she needed to leave for the night. Lydia knelt up on the couch to watch him. “Jordan? What’re you doing?”

He sat back down next to her and handed her a plain white envelope. “I know we missed the holiday, but I, um, I got you something.”

“Jordan! You didn’t have to.” There was something inside, small and surprisingly heavy.

He leaned his head against his hand and watched her run her fingers along the envelope. “It’s not anything that’s any big deal. I just saw it downtown.”

Lydia peeled open the envelope, tipped the little object out into her hand. It was actually a set of hair combs, the metal greenish with age, ornate tines and the simple outline of an oak leaf on each one.

“They made me think about you. Well, sort of you. You know, part of the banshee descriptions in the myths we looked at describe them sitting nearby and combing their hair when all was well. I know these are brass not gold like the myth, and they’re not even really the right kind of comb, but they made me think of you when I saw them.”

Lydia ran a fingertip along the curve of one metal leaf, then folded them back in the envelope, got up to zip them into the inner pocket of her purse.

“Do you like them then?” Jordan asked, a faint frown between his eyes.

Lydia sat back down across his lap, cupped his jaw in her hands and kissed him until he chased her mouth when she pulled away. “They’re lovely.” 

Jordan smiled, traced his knuckles down her cheek.

Lydia left a half hour later than she’d planned with her hair loose down her back.

Monday morning Lydia curled her hair and piled it up messily on the back of her head, using the combs to hold the sides steady. The patina of the brass brought out the true red tones in her hair. She put on her darkest lipstick and tipped her head to the side just enough so the curve of her smile would be in the picture but not her face. It took her a few tries to get a good picture; sure she was taking it by holding her phone as far behind her own head as she could reach, but she’d used to be good at this.

Under the best picture she typed _all’s well <3_ and hit send. Lydia’d never sent him a picture of her before, but this one was harmless if anyone else saw it. And she wanted Jordan to see his present on her the first time she wore it.

In biology her phone finally buzzed and Jordan had replied _good morning beautiful :)_.

Lydia ducked to hide her smile. He’d never called her that before.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure what the wait will be like for chapter three, but big thanks to everyone who commented, kudoed, or said nice things in tumblr tags. It means a lot to hear how this story is working for you. :)


	3. Branes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Branes - A surface without end. A structure on which to build. This is only one home of many, but it's the one that we share for now, so all the more precious._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter there are datenights, misunderstandings, sudden frights, friends supporting each other, and we keep up that M rating. Chapters one and two have been edited and the story tags have been updated since the last chapter was posted forever ago (sorry!) so check those things out and enjoy.

 

Lydia let herself into Jordan’s apartment earlier than usual one Sunday, found him with a broom in one hand and energetically kicking a binder under his couch with one foot.

Jordan’s apartment was very plain, light green walls and framed nature photos that had been there already when he’d first moved in. It was on the ground floor of a reasonably nice building, an old and slightly ugly building, but it wasn’t far from the station and the preserve was right outside his back door. The floors were always clean, the windows always uncovered for the sunshine, but Jordan was a particularly weird kind of packrat. Every flat surface in his place was covered in newspapers and old books, containers of tiny screws, clipped pieces of wire, miniature tools, all interspersed with dried grasses and flowers arrayed in glass jars.

She still had no idea what the significance of those things were to Jordan, but when he’d decided to flee the town he’d taken most of those jars with him.

Maybe she’d find out someday.

He was barefoot and wearing a tattered army t-shirt, smiling at her. She leaned her palms against his chest and lightly kissed him hello. “Want any help?”

“Nope, I’m almost done.”

She sat down on his couch and tucked her feet up next to her out of the way.

“Have you eaten? Want to go get lunch? I’m almost out of everything, but I’m really almost done with this,” he said.

“We could walk to the panini place a few blocks down? It’s nice out today, warm.”

He hummed agreeably. She watched him sweep carefully around the corner into the tiny kitchen.

“Jordan, what do you do with your paychecks?”

They both froze. Lydia halfway cringed. She really hadn’t meant to just blurt that out.

Jordan blinked at her a few times. “ _Huh_?”

“Sorry. I’m so sorry, that is really none of my business. But you’re not a big drinker or anything and you don’t have a clothes habit. I’ve never actually seen you buy anything except food or new tires and pay your rent. And I know the rent on this place isn’t unreasonable, especially for California. And if you had any kind of loan for the police academy it would be minimal by now.”

He was still frowning at her, but he didn’t actually look upset so she resisted the urge to bite at her lips. It was far too late to take the question back now anyway.

“Savings mostly,” he said eventually.

“For something in particular? I do know it’s ideal to start retirement savings by around 25 simply due to compounding interest, but…” she trailed off and they stayed silent a few minutes. This was such a weird conversation to be having at random.

Then Jordan said, “A house,” with the kind of shy, fervent hopefulness that ached to hear. “I like it here. I want a house, on an actual lot, with trees that are mine. I don’t want to be in debt with some mortgage that’ll last half my life to do it either.”

Lydia thought she probably knew what was in that binder now. “Can I look?”

After a moment he nodded, went back to sweeping without looking up to see her reactions. Oh sweetheart.

The binder under the couch was full of printed out home listings from all over Beacon Hills, all different sizes and styles of home. Some had checkmarks in places over the pictures, big trees in the yard, big windows.

But there were a lot more question marks scribbled down than checks.

He sat down next to her after a few minutes, wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “I have so many printouts because I’m still not sure what I’m really looking for. I don’t know anything about looking for a house. My parents have been in the same house my entire life.”

She rested her bent knees over his warm thigh and flipped through the pages. “Well, there’s probably a lot of stuff that’ll let you narrow it down. You’re definitely looking for somewhere long-term, not a starter sort of home, right? That’s why you’ve been saving up?”

“Yeah, I guess that’s right.”

She flipped ahead to the blank side of the last page, plucked a pencil out of her bag. “Well you definitely need someplace with a garage, or enough space to add one, and one that’s a good size because honestly Jordan, you seem to hoard electronic junk.”

“I’m trying to rebuild a shortwave radio setup.”

“Mmhm. What about the ancient, miniature black and white tv that doesn’t even start?”

“I just thought it looked cute.”

She let her head fall back against his arm and closed her eyes for a few seconds because he was truly and completely dead serious.

“Ooook. Front yard size doesn’t matter, no one ever actually spends time out in a front yard. You should look for at least three bedrooms, at least two full baths. Anything that’s not a galley kitchen will do fine; why those were ever popular I don’t even know. It’d probably be good if there’s a room that could be office space, you could put your couch in there.” 

She wrote down each detail in a list, right under mature trees and large windows.

“You’ll want to check on the patterns of flooding here, even though we haven’t had decent rain since August. And keeping the possibilities focused on the west side of town nearer the station narrows things down even more. You wouldn’t want to be in Eastwood’s school district anyway.”

“Is Beacon Hills High actually that much better?”

Lydia huffed. “As if I’d ever send anyone there. Seriously? With everything that’s happened to us there? Sure, they have actual Latin classes, lacrosse and swimming, and a history section in the library that’s actually the best one in the entire county, but that’s what interlibrary loans and Devenford Prep are for.”

“Why didn’t you go there then?” he asked.

It was a completely fair question, given what she’d just said. It just wasn’t one she wanted to answer. Lydia tapped her fingers on the paper for a moment before she made herself stop. “Because I didn’t want to. High school was supposed to be about fun. I could put real work into my academics when I went away to college. It was, I knew it wasn’t going to take me real work to get excellent grades throughout public school. It never had before. And honestly, my parents weren’t really confronted with the reality of my IQ or anything until I was most of the way through sophomore year and the school basically _demanded_ they have me tested.”

Jordan still couldn’t understand how someone around Lydia as much as her parents must have been could have somehow _not noticed_ her intelligence.

Even before he’d really gotten to know her, before it became normal that she came over with notebooks full of equations he couldn’t hope to even partially comprehend, and curled up against his side and muttered at them while he pretended to watch the tv, it had just seemed obvious. Lydia Martin showed up at crime scenes she shouldn’t even know about, was disturbingly hard to frighten (because the game locker full of _people_ hadn’t phased her), and was very, very smart.

Something was either very wrong about her story or he didn’t really have the whole story.

Jordan felt pretty sure this was something Lydia just didn’t want to tell him.

“When do you find out about college? How long do places make you wait before they tell you anything?”

Lydia turned to sit facing him, his hand slipping down to rest on the small of her back. His thumb rubbed back and forth along the sheer of her blouse. “Well I applied lots of places, Princeton and MIT of course, and I have gotten admitted at a few schools so far, but I think I’m actually hoping for Stanford now.”

“Really? I thought MIT was the best for your things.”

“It is,” and she’d always idly, or maybe not so idly, dreamed about going there, “but I don’t think I want to be that far away anymore. Definitely not for that long.” PhD work would be a whole different consideration for her to make compared to a four year, undergraduate degree commitment. She could afford to be choosier about her location for now.

It wasn’t like Stanford was settling or anything.

“Really? Why?”

She pressed her lips together and stared at him. “Jordan.”

“Oh. Oh! Ok.”

And he looked so astonished, that being far away from him and everyone they knew would have even _crossed her mind_ as being something like a decision making factor, Lydia had to kiss him.

*

Lydia texted Parrish with her phone tucked behind a book, while she was finishing grading _another_ mess of papers for AP Chemistry. Being a TA was just one more check mark to have on her college applications, something to make up for the blatant gap where all the social offices she’d planned on having as a senior (and then not even run for) was. Useful, but oh so boring.

 

_Bring dinner to the lake house? 7 pm tonight?_

_Sure! Any requests?_

_Sushi!_

_See you there :)_

_Bring sake? ;)_

_NO >:/_

_< 3 <3 <3      _

 

She got there early, took out an armful of the big, white pillar candles they’d used to stage the house, brought them all the way down to the boat house and lit them in clusters, laid a blanket out on the deck in front of the water. The moon was waning but still bright. She tipped her face up into the pale light.

Hayden and Liam around the full moon were a whole different pain in the ass than Liam alone had been, playful and too noisy and sometimes dragging Scott into being an idiot along with them. But it was good to see Scott seeming young again, lighter, and at least they weren’t cramming anyone in her basement anymore. Malia had her own full-moon habits now and most of them were Stiles’ problem. If you could really call it a problem.

The lake house had been on the market for months now, with few showings and no serious offers, despite a reduction in the selling price. Lydia knew they really needed to sell it, but it was going to break her heart when she couldn’t come here anymore.

She heard Parrish coming long before any normal human would have, not from hearing the sounds he made like a werewolf would, but from a ping-back, like sonar, on the wavelength they both seemed to share. She could feel the sound along her back.

“Hey Lydia, I brought about five different boxes, because I actually don’t know what kinds you like and sorry, but I am _starving_. Some idiot decided to try and rob a jewelry store downtown in broad daylight on my lunch break. Like that was ever going to work out. We got like four different videos of the whole thing.”

She still pulled him down for kisses before they touched the food, on tiptoes with her arms around his warm neck.

Sushi was technically a finger food in many places, and was usually at least a little messy to eat. They didn’t bother with chopsticks, poured soy sauce over everything in the little plastic trays, smeared wasabi over the tops of California rolls with the pads of their fingers, ate with their feet dangling into the lake water. It was quiet except for water lapping, some distant splashes, voices across the lake somewhere else, still too early in the year for more than the occasional cricket. The frogs were still silent, asleep down in the mud. Jordan thought he felt a fish brush his foot, even dropped a piece of rice into the water for it, but they didn’t see anything.

For about an hour they ate and talked about next to nothing. It was nice. So very nice. Easy and painless.

Between them, they ate up everything except one odd looking shrimp roll. Lydia scrubbed her hands clean with a dampened napkin and leaned back on her elbows, shaking her hair out behind her with a luxurious sigh.

Parrish was pouring water over his hands for the third time, scrubbing them together out over the lake, scraping under his nails with a thumb. The water plunked down onto the lake’s flat surface with loud slaps, ripples spreading out.

“Do you need to be anywhere?” he asked.

Lydia sighed, flopped all the way down on her back, one foot still half in the lake. Her skirt was crumpled up halfway up her thighs but she couldn’t find a reason she should care. It probably made a nice view for her present company. “Nope. Thankfully. It’s such a nice night.”

Jordan smiled back at her over his shoulder. “It’s beautiful.”

She watched him pace around the boathouse, pinching out the candle lights with his bare fingers, no hurry in his movements, his body finally starting to remember while wide awake that simple fire couldn’t hurt him anymore. There was something tense in the air, in the way he held his back, in how dark his eyes were in the dimming firelights. She could feel it inching up her spine. She watched him. 

Jordan held out both hands to help her up, her fingers cool on his palms, yanked her upright fast and pulled her in flush against his chest, arms tight around her back, kissed her forehead and her cheek before he caught her lips like it had been weeks since he’d been able to kiss her, months instead of barely an hour.

He wasn’t used to _wanting_ like this.

She kissed back hard like she always did, nipped, licked across his tongue the way that made him shudder and he pulled away to murmur, “Can you be quiet?” into her ear before ducking to get the curve of her neck against his mouth.

Lydia could already feel herself flushing hot all over, because she had never, ever thought he’d go for something like this, much less _initiate_ it. Still waters let sound travel for _miles_. Any noise they made would make it across the lake. She still nodded.

“Good,” he murmured. She could feel the hot air as he breathed into her hair.

There was an old chair in one corner, the darkest corner now with most of the candles put out, and Jordan sat, pulled her down and back onto his lap. Her legs fell open along the outsides of his, splayed apart and held there. She could see the pale of his bare feet planted against the wood. Hers couldn’t reach. Like this, Lydia had no real leverage, no way to make him hurry up and give her more, no way to rock back against him.

She could feel she was already wet when he pushed her panties aside with his thumb, slid one finger inside her.

They’d done this before, in his kitchen, his couch, his bed. He was good at this, knew exactly what she liked. So he was absolutely stroking into her so terribly slow on purpose.

His left arm was tight around her waist, palm resting warm up along the underside of her breast. She dug her nails in above his wrist. Hard. He only hummed against the back of her neck, a low thrumming. _Oh_ he knew he was teasing her. “You’re a complete brat,” she growled.

“I am?” he murmured against her neck, but his voice was laughing.

Jordan slid another finger inside her body, curled them in circles the way she liked and pressed his flushed cheek against her hair. Everything was silent except their heavy breathing and the water, the occasional hot slick sound. Jordan could feel his heart racing, the ache low in his belly. He hadn’t actually planned to do this; it was the kind of thing people planned out to be romantic, wasn’t it? But the way she’d sprawled out on the deck, her face in the dim light had made him reckless. She whimpered when his fingers nudged into a tight spot and he slowed his touch, rubbed against it until it gave in, turned as slick and hot and clinging as the rest of her around his fingers.

It didn’t take long before Lydia could feel herself getting close, feel herself squeezing desperately around his fingers, squirming against his arms. It just wasn’t quite _enough_.

“Oh please, Jordan give me another.”

“You sure?”

“What kind of a question is that?! Please Jordan, I’m…” His ring finger slipped in easy, already slick from her, but it was enough Lydia could feel the stretch, could squeeze down around his fingers the way she really wanted to be doing to his cock. She tried to rock closer but it just didn’t work, the rough fabric of his work pants catching under her knees. The knuckle of his thumb rubbed up under her clit, hard circles through the lace of her panties and oh that was just _it_.

Lydia forgot to be quiet. Her first cry echoed out over the lake before Jordan’s palm clamped down over her mouth.

She sank her nails into the back of his hand, but her next high, ringing whine stayed smothered enough not to echo. Jordan felt her clutch down again around his wet fingers, kissed her jaw while she shuddered through it. She squirmed hard enough to brush the pretty curve of her ass across where he was hard,  setting off a hot ache in his hips, curling him forward to press his face against the rasp of her shear blouse.

Jordan matched his breaths to hers as they slowed.

Lydia snatched at his wrist when his fingers curled inside her again. “Oh nnnnn stop, stop. If you give me another after all that I won’t be able to walk back up the hill.”

He laughed and nuzzled her cheek, waited until her insides had completely stopped shuddering to slip his fingers out of her. She was still breathing hard, shoulders leaned back into his chest. He sucked his wet fingers into his mouth, slick tangy sweetness that made his head spin.

Lydia felt herself twitch at the sight. There was no way he knew how hot that looked. She curled a shaky arm back around his neck. “Let me return the favor, hm? Can you be quiet?”

“Um,” he said, looking away at the water.

“Mm? What is it babe?”

“If I let you I won’t be able to drive myself home. There’s no way I’ll be able to stay awake anymore after that; I’ve been up too long.”

Lydia pressed a hand over her face as she tried not to openly laugh and failed. “Are we seriously… We’re both here, in the moonlight, ready to go, and we’re going to go home and, and masturbate by ourselves instead because we’re too tired?! How is this even happening.”

Lydia twisted sideways and kept laughing against his throat. Jordan grinned in response, petting her mussed up hair, but he was mostly bemused. Was it really that weird a thing to do? Sure it was kinda embarrassing, but he could already feel in his muscles that if he let her get her hands on him he wasn’t going to be able to keep his eyes open five more minutes. “Well it’s not like that’s really a _hardship_ , especially now that I know what you actually sound like…”

Oh crap.

Shit he had actually just blurted that out. He’d never planned to admit that he…

But Lydia’s mouth was curling slowly into a wicked smile. Cool fingertips pressed along his throat to make him look her in the eyes. “Did you use to think about me _before_ you knew what I sounded like Jordan?” she purred.

Jordan swallowed hard. “Yes. Sorry. I, never actually meant to tell you that. I shouldn’t have…”

He shouldn’t have any of it probably, but it was really too late for that now.

Lydia swung her legs, which were still trembling and felt like they’d tripled in weight, around to sit sideways on his lap, instead of grinding her ass back onto where he was obviously still hard in his pants the way she really wanted to. She snorted delicately, tossed her hair over one shoulder. “I’d have been offended if you hadn’t. You don’t think looking like this takes no effort do you?”

He kissed her pretty mouth. “I wouldn’t know.”

Lydia ran her hands up along his arms, slid under the sleeves to gently squeeze his shoulders. “Mmm. Sure you do.”

They kissed for a while, but they’d let the heat go out of it. It was just plush and comforting, slow damp touches. Familiar. She leaned heavy against his chest and he tugged her skirt down over her thighs with one hand.

Lydia’s legs were still shaky as she put out the rest of the candles, leaving them out for another time perhaps. She let Jordan practically tow her back up the hill by the hand. His eyes flared orange in the dark. The moonlight didn’t make it down through the pines. But with the night vision those flaming eyes gave him he didn’t stumble on the trail. Since she could hear where his feet had just fallen neither did she.

She smiled and rubbed circles over his pulse with her thumb while they walked.

*

Jordan didn’t notice how much she’d scratched up his arms until he got out of the shower, breathless, and flicked on the lights. Lydia kept her nails short, glossed dark purple this week, but they were sharp. She’d left plenty of marks.

There was no way Parrish could pull off wearing his jacket the entire workday, not a chance, not with the weather turned so warm this week. He couldn’t bandage both of his entire forearms without raising even worse suspicions. He didn’t have a long sleeved shirt for work. Anyone would know what kind of scratches these were on sight.

Maybe they’d look better in the morning. Maybe the crappy bathroom light made it look worse than it really did. If not he’d have to text Lydia about cover-up or something before he went to work.

It was more convenient, but he was still a little sad the next morning to find that all the little half-moon cuts and pink trailing scrapes had vanished overnight.

*

Lydia knew she was in debt. She wasn’t stupid. Bad spending habits much of the time, but not stupid.

She knew which interest rate was on which card, which ones she could afford to make the minimum payments on at all and for how much longer she could pay only a percentage of the bill, before it reached a point where she couldn’t pay off her debt in a reasonable amount of time even once she had a real job.

She’d already taken some reasonable steps in the last year, lowered the data plan on her cell phone, wiped her car down with a damp towel herself and took it through a carwash less. She hadn’t gotten her nails done professionally in months, kept the makeup purchases to a minimum.

But she wasn’t a spoiled brat anymore; Daddy wasn’t providing a ridiculous allowance instead of consistent attention and an even temper. She needed to think about this in regards to upcoming needs, like moving, job interviews, formal events, business casual. Lydia knew, pragmatically not arrogantly, that getting work after graduation wasn’t going to be a big issue for her. Her eventual skillset would be hard to come by.

But, certain things had changed.

Lydia was starting to have to consider that she might actually turn down some of the higher paying job offers she might get, in favor of things like a California location or the ability to do more interesting research. That hadn’t been something she’d ever really considered before. Prior to the last few years she’d always figured she’d leave Beacon Hills and never, ever look back.

But now that she’d bled for it and fought for it and had so much here worth keeping, that was never going to happen.

So one Friday evening she put her music on, opened her overcrowded closet doors with a flourish that benefitted no one but her and Prada.

She’d brought bags upstairs to fill with things for resale up in Drakesville, others for the things too old to sell but she could still donate them somewhere and write it off her mom’s taxes when Lydia filed them for her later this year.

The resale bags filled up faster than she’d expected. Much.

All of the rompers could go; she’d barely liked the style when it had been new and interesting. All the leather jewelry had to go too; it reminded her too much of Jackson to wear. Most of the high-gloss gold bracelets and necklaces could go out, they looked younger than she liked anymore and cheaper than they should for what she’d paid for them. There were at least eight expensive party dresses she knew she’d never wear again and when had she ended up with _four_ pink purses?

Prada curled up right on top of Lydia’s pillow (of course) to get away from where she was tossing things out her closet door.

Ripped socks and tights went into the trash instead of crammed into the backs of her drawers. Three of her swimsuits had done that thing where the fabrics got all tacky and powdery and fell apart. Those went in the trash too, and she’d had to stop and scrub the icky feeling off her hands.

Of course, once she was in her bathroom she noticed that under her bathroom sink and the over the toilet cabinet were clogged with lotion bottles that only held congealing dregs, the kinds of body spray she hadn’t used in a year, body glitter she wouldn’t be _caught dead_ in now, and misplaced pots and lids of makeup that, judging by the logo that wasn’t even _in production_ anymore, so were far too old to put anywhere near her eyes.

Lydia huffed a heavy sigh, tied her hair up in a loop and out of the way, and went downstairs for a kitchen bin liner. Or three. Most of this needed to go straight in the trash. How had she been working around all of this junk for months without even noticing it? Prada followed her downstairs, tiny tail wagging, but whined to be carried back up. Lydia kissed her little head and carried her. She knew Prada was getting old, more grey than white around her muzzle. Twelve was a lot of years for a little dog.

Prada had been a present, a distraction when her father had had Grandma committed and Lydia’s parents had decided to hold her back from starting school. As if a puppy was going to keep all that _mess_ from a six year old, though she’d never say Prada hadn’t been a help or a comfort while Lydia’s entire life went to shit back then. Or when it had gone to shit again almost two years ago. Lydia was really, really not looking forward to having to leave Prada here while she was in a dorm.

There were enough oozy, plastic bottles to fill two of the kitchen bin liners. Lydia was seriously disgusted.

After three hours of digging through what seemed like every single piece of everything she’d ever owned she’d moved her hidden collection of mathematics books three times, found half a dozen perfectly good bras she had no hope of fitting herself into anymore, spilled _sequins_ (ug) off a ripped skirt all over the carpet, and found a photo of her and Allison she’d forgotten she’d printed out, them by Lydia’s pool that one summer, and had had to stop and splash her face with cold water.

There was a large pile of empty hangers on the bed next to Prada when she started sorting through the shoes and handbags.

She kept most of the neutrals of her shoes and purses, white, tan, black, grey, navy, those would last for years yet. Same with all the pearl jewelry, pearls never went out of style. Most of her jackets could double as business casual later on, with plain blouses and dark pants even the teal one would work. All the blouses that didn’t have pictures or something on them stayed, all her boots and skirts, all the dark wash jeans, all the normal t-shirts that still fit well. She kept enough of the fancy party dresses to have one for any occasion, but lots of them had gone into a bag, along with a dozen pairs of unwearable shoes, ones with sequins or words on them or broken-off spikes.

(But she kept all of her sluttiest heels, because those would still go to _very_ good use, even if she never wore them outside of a house again.)

Most of the bags were full, and most of what was in them she hadn’t worn in months. What she liked had shifted without her noticing. Her closet looked darker and plainer and emptier than it’d been in a long time, but everything in there was something she actually, genuinely liked and used and there was space now for the things she needed.

Eventually, accidentally, she found Allison’s teal heart sweater, folded carefully inside a delicate shopping bag. It was one of the few things of hers Lydia had kept. Allison had always picked teals and purples over pinks and reds. Lydia held it tenderly up to her face, but to a human nose it didn’t smell like her anymore, not even a trace.

She had to sit down on her bed for a minute until the tears stopped. Oh it still hurt to picture her face.

By eleven when she realized she hadn’t even looked through _anything_ under her bed yet she headed back downstairs to get a drink. Mom better have left some open wine in the fridge. If not Lydia was opening herself a bottle of white and dealing with the fuss later. She wasn’t supposed to open anything fancy without asking, but she wasn’t really sure where Mom even was.

It turned out Mom was grading papers in the living room, an open bottle of red next to her on the table. The lamp was on but not the other lights and Mom was squinting through her glasses in the dim. Lydia sighed, flicked on the main light and poured herself a glass without comment.

“You drink that you are not stepping one toe outside this house,” Mom said without looking up, but she was already squinting less. There was a lot of red ink on those papers.

Lydia took a long drink and resolutely did not grimace. Mom liked _very_ dry reds. “I know the rules Mom.” She just needed something to take the edge off her fizzing head. And since this wasn’t a banshee issue wine would do the trick.

Lydia could feel Mom look her over, knew she was in an old pair of sweatpants with a paint stain on one leg, a cami that clashed in every way, hair in a mess on top of her head and makeup only halfway scrubbed off. Her eyes were probably still a little red, but she tried for a cheerfully blank expression anyways. Though, it’d used to come easier to her than it did now.

Mom pursed her lips and hrmmed at her and Lydia dropped it, rolled her eyes and took another drink.

“What have you been doing up there all this time? I hear all kinds of noise.”

“Spring cleaning,” Lydia said chirpily. “Where’d you leave the vacuum?”

“The same closet it’s been in as long as we’ve lived here. Cleaning on a Friday night? Sure nobody’s missing you?” Mom said, teasing.

Most Fridays Lydia actually did go out, but it was usually to Kira’s house with Malia to play card games or watch a movie, continue reintroducing Malia to different people-foods she wouldn’t try on her own. Last time they’d gotten a dozen different flavors of the tiny containers of Ben & Jerry’s. That had been a hit. If she didn’t go over she usually stayed in and read, or went out in the woods if the weather was nice. Jordan used his Fridays to catch up on sleep.

“Mom, you know I’ve been worn out on chasing boys for a while. I’m over that. It’s no fun anymore.”

Lydia still had no idea how Mom was going to react to Jordan. She’d probably be a bit upset about his age, but honestly it was only six years between them and Dad had been older than Mom too, though Lydia knew they’d met when Mom was in college.

She’d heard _plenty_ about whose plans had changed for whom during the divorce.

It still seemed best to wait until sometime after graduation to introduce them. Mom would be mad about the whole not telling her she’d been seeing someone thing, but Lydia would be nineteen and out of high school by then, so there’d be nothing she could actually _do_ about it but fuss at Lydia.

That was better than some of the alternatives, if Mom decided to insist on getting the wrong idea.

Her Mom flapped a hand at her and looked back down at her grading. “I know, I know, you’re getting more grownup every day. And then you’ll be off to college this fall, leave me here with all these people who can’t tell eukaryotic cells from prokaryotic. It’s just, you’ve seemed so much happier sweetie. Better after the last year. Even after you got… hurt last fall.”

Mom still did her best to turn a blind eye to the Beacon-ish parts of Beacon Hills. Lydia honestly didn’t blame her for that. Mom wasn’t a banshee, or a cop, or anything else that could maybe handle dealing with the supernatural. Lydia didn’t actually want her involved, though she appreciated how Mom was much better about Lydia’s friends now than she’d been before, calmer and less hostile when things sounded too strange. Lydia’d been able to hear how she’d yelled at Stiles in the hospital. Mom still thought Allison had died in a mugging, but that was fine too. All Lydia had needed Mom to know about that was how much Lydia had loved her.

Lydia kissed her Mom’s cheek before she quickly helped herself to more of her wine and hurried back upstairs before she could protest.

That Saturday, with Mom out at her bookclub (more like a wine tasting club, with books) Lydia drove up to Drakesville, where no one at any of the shops would know her on sight, the backseat filled with bags of things to sell, the trunk with donations. She used to drive Allison up here with her, to trawl through the fancier stores, make a day of it, sit and people watch over lunch or smoothies.

But Kira wasn’t one to shop without a specific item in mind and Malia loathed the entire process, so Lydia turned her music up loud in her empty car.

It took six different stops before she’d gotten rid of it all, tucked the cash into a black bag in the trunk out of sight and headed further north towards the bigger shops.

There were some things she actually needed to buy now, a suit, plain black, one with both a skirt and slacks to work with. Stanford would probably want an interview eventually. A new swimsuit for the coming summer would be useful, and some new sets of lingerie would go to good use as well, a nice pink and some darker jewel tones. Those would all work with the red heels Jordan hadn’t seen her in yet. She was saving those for some time special.

She ended up coming home with two additional pairs of slacks, navy and khaki, and a grey pencil skirt she hadn’t planned on purchasing, but those weren’t the same kind of impulse buys she used to make. Not at all.

It was a useful Saturday, a useful Friday too, even if she was completely exhausted.

Lydia was outside with her feet in the chilly pool tossing a mini Frisbee for Prada when Mom got home, came out the backdoor and slumped into a lounge chair. “Well what did you do all day? And don’t tell me cleaning. I didn’t even see you this morning.”

Lydia shrugged. “Went out shopping for a bit.”

Her new suit was already at the alterations place downtown, the other purchases airing out upstairs, room completely clean and all her jewelry sorted into two new, lockable cases on top of her dresser.

And Lydia still had enough money left over to pay off the worst credit card entirely.

*

Parrish opened his apartment door after work one evening to the cloying smell of nail polish and the sight of Lydia digging determinedly through his tiny closet.

“Hi?” he said, and sat down on his bed to start unlacing his work boots.

She didn’t even look up. “I don’t think you have a single button up shirt that isn’t for work.”

“Sorry?” he asked. She kept moving his clothes around. “I probably don’t have any. Are we, going somewhere?”

“There’s a club downtown, a nice place. They’re having swing night again. You’re going to take me?”

It wasn’t worded like a question but Parrish could still hear the question, knew if he said no, that he was too tired or didn’t want to go she wouldn’t make an issue out of it.

It was one of the reasons he almost never told her no.

“Sure,” he said and she smiled over her shoulder bright and happy and he could only smile back, “but you know I’m not that good a dancer.” Jordan had almost taken her down with him last week when he’d tripped over his feet and she’d tried to catch him. 

Lydia rolled her eyes, “You’ll be fine, and I’ll back-lead if you get lost.”

Jordan reached around her to hang up his uniform. “Of course you will.” Lydia leading the way when he got lost was typical.

Lydia got up on tiptoes to kiss his jaw. She must have already done her hair before she came over, braided half of it up away from her face with the rest curled, put gold gloss on her nails that had been pink two days ago. Jordan trailed his fingers down her shoulders, playing with the sleeves of her t shirt.

Lydia swayed back against him but kept digging through his closet. “I used to go with Danny, when he was actually in the mood for dancing not just finding a new boy toy. But he graduated last year; he’s down at UCLA. I haven’t been in forever.”

Jordan pressed his nose into her hair. Their powers might come from death, but Lydia always smelled like green things. “Sure I’m not going to embarrass us both forever?”

“Absolutely sure. Here, put this shirt on and wear your dark jacket. We have _got_ to get you some more clothes this summer. It gets going around 10:30. You wanna shower first?”

“Do I need to?” Jordan had thought Lydia was turning around for a hug, but she pressed her face against his chest and breathed in.

“Mmm. No, you smell good like this. Get changed, I’ve got to grab my shoes out of the car.”

The club was a nice place, well, as far as these places went. The floor was pretty clean, the exits were clear; it was dim enough to feel right but not too dim. Lydia’d insisted on driving since she knew where they were going. He’d let himself play with the tips of her red curls at the stoplights and she’d only smacked his hand away once.

Lydia was _stunning_.

She was just stunning like this, darkened eyes, the clingy black dress, her red hair looking inhuman under the colored lights. More inhuman than they both were. She looked like a dream, but this was all real. He saw some heads turn when she towed him out onto the dance floor by the hand, but nobody they knew came here. Jordan couldn’t pretend it wasn’t a rush to hold her hands and curl an arm around her waist in front of people without worrying about it. He spun her out and back in without missing the beat, bent down to kiss her smiling mouth, light kisses not to smudge her lipstick on them both.

She was wearing the blue heels, with the little straps he’d unbuckled from around her ankles that first time.

He’d planned on doing that again later, but after maybe four hours of dancing, both the formal kind he wasn’t that good at and in an informal crush of people later on, they were both exhausted. He walked back to her car with Lydia tucked close along his side in the night air, her arm hot around his waist under his jacket. They went through a drive thru for soft serve ice cream and slumped asleep together on his bed around four am, lipstick smudged on both their faces.

Having to get up in three hours was going to be rough, but this had been worth it.

*

It was just a trick of the light.

It was just Tuesday evening sunlight, another normal Tuesday, but Parrish had slit his eyes open laying under Lydia’s warm, soft weight as they kissed and seen a gleam of red on her cheek, and suddenly all he could remember was her in the passenger seat, charred wet and red and sick glossy yellows and he must’ve lost control somehow and couldn’t she feel it and there was no fixing this, no getting away from what he’d done…

Lydia didn’t notice the first shift in sound from occasional sighs into desperate whimpering, but when his hands scrabbled at the sheets and he flinched back away from her she was off his lap and sitting carefully on the farthest corner of the bed. “Jordan? What’s wrong?”

His eyes were squeezed shut and he was breathing fast, arms pulled tightly against his own chest.

“Jordan?” she asked and got nothing, no response, he didn’t even twitch.

“Jordan, everything’s ok, I’m right here, we’re fine. Think you could you open your pretty eyes?” He was seriously starting to scare her. She’d seen him startled and scared an angry before, but he’d never freaked out like this.

“You’re ok?” His voice was creepily blank and a little tremulous. Something was very wrong.

“Yeah Jordan, I’m fine. Can you tell me what’s wrong?”

He finally moved, pressed a hand over his eyes, exhaled harshly, and she felt the worst of the frightened tension leave her body.

“Nothing. Nothing was wrong, just a trick of the light. Part of a, just a nightmare.”

He still wouldn’t look at her. She moved to sit closer to him, wrapped a hand around one ankle so she could rub the top of his foot with her thumb. “Tell me about it?”

He swallowed with a click, twitched his leg into the grip of her palm. She squeezed and scratched little circles with a nail and he breathed easier.

“At the school, the night we thought we could trap the Dread Doctors, I sat down in my car. I’m not sure if I dozed off and the Hellhound… or they were just making me see things like they did to all of you. And then you were in the car too. And you touched my arm, my face and you kissed me. And we uh, kissed for a while but when I leaned back to look you were burnt, all over. Like, really, really badly. It was like I’d burned you when I touched you and I hadn’t even noticed what I was doing. But once I noticed I could smell it and, and everything. But you didn’t seem to know you were hurt. I tried to back off but I couldn’t get away.”

Lydia watched her thumb against his skin. His feet and ankles were paler than his legs, with narrow toes. “Couldn’t get away.” she said.

“You, um dream-you wouldn’t let me go.”

She went still. “What, I just kept trying to make out with you like I wasn’t all disgusting?”

Jordan finally took his hand off his eyes and she watched him carefully look over her face, hands, and stomach exposed under her open shirt in a way that hurt her heart.

Then he grinned faintly. “Yeah actually.”

“Well, obviously I’d never do _that_ ,” she said and he laughed.

It was getting dim in his room, red sunset faded into violets. She clicked on the lamp before she lay down on him again, going limp and heavy on purpose. Grounding. Jordan’s arms came up and clung instantly, despite the way the memory had made him flinch away. She kissed his chest and let one thigh lay limp between his legs.

“They made me see Tracy rip out my tongue,” she murmured eventually. “I couldn’t even scream. The Doctors, they made us all see terrible things, something that would upset us enough to incapacitate us. I know they made Malia think she was caught in a trap. I don’t know what they showed Scott but he was as out of it as the rest of us. It wasn’t something you did. Or the hound.”

He was rubbing a hand up and down her back now, under her shirt and Lydia had to keep blinking hard not to just lay her head down on his chest and go to sleep. She was supposed to go home for dinner soon, supposed to check in with Kira later about her math homework.

She yawned.

Jordan threaded his fingers into her hair. “Stay a bit longer. Please. I’ll wake you.”

She nodded with her cheek already resting heavy against his chest and her eyes closed. Jordan kissed the top of her head, lay an arm warm along her back with his fingers petting between her shoulder blades.

Lydia dozed with his heartbeat in her ear.

*

One Thursday Stiles and Scott lurched to a noisy halt in front of Parrish’s desk at the station.

“Scott, Scott Scott Scott, look at me right? What is the plan?” Stiles said, one hand gesturing energetically inches from Scott’s face while the other gripped his shoulder hard enough to sway them both.

“I’m going straight home. Kira is staying home. I’m staying at home by myself,” Scott said dutifully with kind of a morose expression, obviously parroting something.

“Right. You are not going over. She is not coming over. No pregame - whatever. You are sleeping just like you told Liam to, or I will come over and cuff you to your radiator again. Ok?”

“Dude!” Scott glanced down at Parrish wide eyed before turning back to Stiles, probably because of the comment about cuffs, not the pregaming comment. It wasn’t like Parrish didn’t know Scott and Kira were together.

“Ah, ah! Look Scott, they think we suck, now we have to kick their asses. Don’t you want to make state one more time?”

“Yeah?”

“Good! Go home.”

Scott grimaced cheerfully and shrugged at Parrish before heading out the door, but Stiles sat down at the nearest desk with an overwrought sigh, scrubbed through his hair with one hand, leg bouncing frantically.

“We play Devenford Prep tomorrow,” he announced, apparently to Parrish.

“Lacrosse?”

“Duh.”

“Hey, I played baseball in the spring in high school. We didn’t have lacrosse.”

Stiles shrugged jerkily. “Sucks for you.”

There was a minute or two of quiet, well, quiet for the station, the front desk phone rang, and Parrish wasn’t the one supposed to answer it today. He went back to filling out his week’s paperwork and ignored Stiles tipping back and forth in the nearby chair.

“They’re the only other team we play that has werewolves on it, well more like _wolf_ right now, but whatever. That we know about anyway.”

“Oh.” Parrish tapped his pen on the half done form he’d _never ever finish_ at this rate.

“I mean, Eastwood High on the other side of town doesn’t even have a _team_ , but Scott and Liam have never picked up on anything with other teams, like the ones from Drakesville north of here, or Rose Bluff across the highway in Glenn county, but you guys don’t really spend that much time up around there right? Cause Drakesville’s so close to the county border, and they actually have a dedicated city police force and all.” 

“Right,” Parrish said slowly, starting to realize how much information Stiles actually retained about the county on a day to day basis. He felt pretty sure most of it hadn’t been acquired from the sheriff. Stiles seemed to acquire it no matter what Stilinski tried to do.

Stiles suddenly threw out both hands. “Hey, you should come watch!”

“Can’t. I have a shift tomorrow night.”

“Swap with Cordova for Saturday. He likes you.”

Parrish wasn’t aware Cordova liked anyone. It wasn’t that the guy was abrasive, he was solemn, never raised his voice or lost his temper. He also never smiled. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“Yeah. I’m serious, he does like you. You don’t bug him.”

“I meant for me to be seen hanging out with you guys.”

“Uh, why would that be a problem?”

Parrish waited for the obvious reasons to occur to Stiles, but instead after a moment he just flapped a hand dismissively. “Dude, just come watch. Sit with Lydia. I know she thinks lacrosse is actually kinda boring, she’s just used to going to our games. And Kira’s so much better about not letting the fox rage out now! Her, Scott, and Malia have even been practicing with the Stilinski method out in the woods sometimes since she came back.”

“Wait, the what method?”

“Well, we’d call it that if we called it anything. It’s how I taught Scott to control the shifts. Basically I duct taped his arms together and threw stuff at him to upset him while he was wearing a heart-rate monitor, so he had to learn to control his emotions and heart-rate better, which keeps him from transforming unless he wants to. So, Malia and Scott take Kira out in the preserve and attack her until she gets really mad. I think Scott brings Liam or Hayden sometimes too. She’s a lot better, after spending that time with the skinwalkers. They only had to call her mom once! And even then she’d stopped running before she got there.”

Parrish stared. “I’m never going to understand how all of you have managed to successfully deal with everything going on in this town the last couple of years.”

“Yup, we are all just that awesome. So awesome. It wasn’t hard or scary or anything. So, you’re going to come right? Big game!”

Parrish actually went, though he wore the tan knitted hat he’d never liked and carefully circled around behind the bleachers where the Sheriff, Melissa McCall, the Yukimuras, and wow, Agent McCall were all sitting together. He felt like one of those creeps that graduated and lived in their parent’s basement or something, hung out at all the high school events until they were too old to be allowed in.

It wasn’t like he could tell anyone why they were his friends. He couldn’t explain Lydia.

He spotted Malia first, standing in the top row with one hand around the railing like a ship mast. She seemed to smell him before she saw him, tipped her chin to gesture him up. He couldn’t see Lydia, but he could tell she was near. Somehow he always knew.

Lydia was smiling at him. She’d heard him coming too.

“Jordan! Here, come sit by me. You’re just in time.”

Lydia had a hat with a pompom on top, was sharing a blanket with another girl he didn’t recognize. She lifted the corner of it from under her legs and tugged him to sit down under it, her gloved hand running up to hold his arm.

The girl he didn’t recognize was squinting at him, probably suspiciously. He might have seen her around before, but she definitely wasn’t in the know about Scott’s pack.

“Sydney, this is Jordan. Jordan, Sydney. We’ve all had sciences together since freshman year. We’re in AP Bio together right now,” Lydia said, kissing his cheek and turning to face the game as the whistle sounded. Jordan tried not to flush at the kiss, but no one had been looking. Malia knew about them of course and if anything Sydney looked _less_ suspicious and confused now that Lydia’d kissed him. It helped. On impulse he kissed the pompom next to his face and she slapped his chest teasingly without even looking away from the field.

Jordan didn’t actually know anything about lacrosse. Lydia ended up murmuring the rules and plays into his ear as the game went on. He clapped whenever she and Sydney did, held Lydia’s hand under the blanket the rest of the time. Malia didn’t clap or cheer, only watched Stiles running with a fixed expression.

They won by three points, Scott, Stiles, and Liam almost knocking each other down in excitement. This had been nice, feeling like a part of the whole group without anything terrible hanging over them, a better idea than he’d first thought.

He still left to head back to his car before everyone met together near Stiles jeep. The sheriff didn’t know he’d traded shifts, though it wasn’t like no one else ever did that. He just, didn’t want anyone to get the wrong idea.

Lydia rolled her eyes at him but let him go with a quick kiss goodnight while people cheered and shuffled down to the field all around them.

*

They’d busted a drug deal over in the empty warehouse district by the highway, a tipoff from a repeat user in exchange for reduced sentence. Normal.

One of the dealers was young, panicked, pulled a gun and then pulled the trigger.

It didn’t seem right then like it happened fast, not as fast as it actually must have. Cordova and the sheriff were beside him, the bullet was fired from chest height.

Parrish stepped forward and a bit sideways and took the bullet in his upper right arm.

It hurt. Not as bad as the car fire, not as bad as the bomb or the spray can, but nothing about being supernatural had ever dulled the pain. He felt the bullet split the flesh, grind across the bone to a splintery stop. The impact knocked him backwards. Hands caught him, Stilinski. Cordova lunged for the gunman.

Parrish blinked. He heard a distant clang of alarm like a bell, but sounds seemed muffled. Someone was yelling at him.

He’d heal. They wouldn’t. This was easy.

The guy who’d fired had already dropped the gun, was on the ground, may have pissed himself. Probably hadn’t meant to actually pull the trigger.

The wound wasn’t smoking when he looked down. Damn. He didn’t have a lighter or anything with him.

He felt himself moving and it was the Sheriff, dragging him around the side of a cruiser and yanking his sleeve out of the way to see the wound. Blood was running slowly down his arm to his fingers.

“Parrish! _Parrish_! Look at me. It’s not healing.” The Sheriff was hissing inches from his face. “What do you need to do? Hospital?”

He understood the words more than he’d heard them. He could feel the hound’s heat twitching down inside him, but couldn’t reach it.

“Do we need to go to the hospital?”

“A lighter. I need a lighter.”

Stilinski stepped back frowning. Parrish clumsily tugged the rest of his ruined sleeve up out of the way.

“He ok?” Cordova called from the other side of the cruiser.

“Yeah. Just a graze. He’s fine. Radio in for another car for backup,” Stilinski said with a blank expression as he pulled a lighter out of the glove box and pressed it into his bloody hand.

Parrish had to suck in a few breaths before he clicked the light.

The pain of the fire only lasted a moment this time. He felt his eyes flare as the heat came up from his hands like it always did. The bullet melted away to nothing and his flesh sealed together with a crackle, a jump in his arm muscles like a flicker.

Parrish slumped back against the cruiser as the flames went out. Sheriff Stilinski had stepped back, his mouth curled in disgust. He knew his fangs and claws hadn’t slipped out. He blinked until his eyes stopped glowing.

Stilinski coughed. The smell of burnt flesh barely even registered as strange after last year.

Parrish stayed where he stood, holding gauze he didn’t need over a wound he didn’t have anymore. Cordova kept glancing back to check on him and Parrish tried to smile like everything was going to be fine. It was fine, actually. It just wouldn’t have been if it was either of the others.

Sheriff Stilinski didn’t say another word to him until they were in his car and heading back to Parrish’s place since there was no point going to the hospital like they’d said. “Don’t you ever do that again. Ever. And I’d like your word on that Parrish.”

“Sheriff?” He already knew about the hound, had for months, knew what Parrish could do. Why would…

“I saw you move. I _know_ you know what I’m saying. I won’t have my people pulling stunts like that.”

Oh.

Stilinski was a good guy, a good officer. He wasn’t upset about the stuff with the hound, the supernatural weirdness, it was that Parrish had stepped in front of him. “I can’t promise you that sir.”

“That’s unacceptable _deputy_.”

He shrugged. “So maybe I’m back on desk duty again. But if we get in that situation I’d do the same thing. I know I’ll probably make it. I have some guarantees that most injuries won’t stop me anymore. You and Cordova don’t. Clarke doesn’t. Ramirez doesn’t. I’ll do whatever I need to.”   

Stilinski didn’t say another word the rest of the drive, but he still waited in the parking lot until Parrish had closed his front door behind himself.

*

Lydia was sitting on his couch reading when he got home, two hours later than usual with blood all over his sleeve. She wasn’t surprised to see it.

“You heard?” he asked and she nodded, pale, mouth tight. He didn’t ask how she’d heard it, if she’d been listening to him somehow or if she’d simply gotten a text. Maybe he’d heard her hear it, that distant bell tone of fear that hadn’t been his.

“You should get cleaned up. We’ll order a pizza or something before you sleep.”

He nodded. That sounded like it made sense. He didn’t move though.

Lydia stood after a moment, took his hand, and walked him into his own bathroom.

He was so tired. Even walking through the desert that night, hoping desperately that he’d worked out the direction correctly and was heading towards his base, he didn’t think he’d been this tired.

Parrish slid down to sit on his shower floor, the water running over him lukewarm, eyes closed. He didn’t actually remember starting the water - Lydia must have done it. Brown flecks of dried blood swirled by his foot. He heard the rustle as Lydia stripped down to just panties and climbed in with him, pressed his head back into the spray and scrubbed her fingers through his hair before reaching for his shampoo. She kept her own bottle here now.

A blink and his forehead was leaning heavy against her thigh. Another and the water turned off with a clank.

The chilly air woke him up a bit, enough to dry himself off and drape a towel around Lydia’s shoulders, enough to pull on some flannel pants and an old sweatshirt while she put her skirt and blouse back on, enough to shuffle back over to the couch and sit down.

His arm didn’t even ache. He was just so _tired_.

Lydia pulled a book out of her bag and sat down next to him, reached out and pulled him close. Somehow he ended up lying half on his stomach between her legs, head rested heavy on her belly while she played with his hair with one hand, one plastic button poking his ear.

He was asleep in seconds.

*

Lydia’s heart jumped in her chest, but she managed not to physically jump when there was a banging on Jordan’s front door an hour later. Parrish didn’t even twitch at the sound, one arm around her back and his head heavy on her stomach. She’d pulled the hood of his jacket over his eyes to help him sleep. The spine of her book had been resting on his shoulder, but she managed not to drop it on him when she startled.

“Hey Parrish? Dad said you got fricken shot today. Did you really heal up ok or should you have gone to the actual hospital?”

Someone knocked again, but quieter. Scott called, “Parrish? Seriously, if you haven’t healed up right let me help. Or my Mom if you need stitches. She won’t freak out about anything.”

Scott knocked again then they went quiet. Perhaps they’d go after a minute. She’d find her phone and text them. It wasn’t like they didn’t know about her and Parrish, but somehow she didn’t want them to barge in on them like this.

“Screw it. I’m going to pick the lock.”

“Stiles, we shouldn’t…”

“Come on, he could be face down smoldering away on his kitchen table for all we know. Nobody’s answering their fricken phones. Just, give me a minute.”

“Fine. Fine! Just this once.”

“Uh huh. Until the next time we need in somewhere.”

Faint scraping scratching sounds started immediately as Stiles picked the door lock. If she yelled at them it’d probably wake Parrish and she couldn’t actually reach, or even find, her phone right now. They must have tried to text them both. Parrish didn’t have a landline.

Lydia was already glaring when the door clicked open.

“Oh whoops. Hey Lydia. I’m guessing he’s uh, fine then?” Stiles asked too loudly and Scott shushed him.

“He’s fine. There’s not even a mark. He actually got shot at work?” Usually when one of them got shot at there was something with the supernatural world involved.

“Yeah, some dealer panicked. Cordova’s super pissed. He thinks Parrish just got grazed. Uh, Parrish isn’t supposed to go in to work tomorrow, just so you know. Dad is super mega pissed, but we’re going to grab him something extra greasy for dinner to smooth things over.”

“We just wanted to make sure he wasn’t, um, out of it like he got last year. Glad we didn’t wake him up.” Scott smiled, waved and headed for the door but Stiles didn’t move.

“Seriously Lydia, let him know next time he needs a favor it’s done. Legal or not, I will make it happen.”

Perhaps the shooter would have missed everyone, perhaps someone would have only been grazed for real, but Stile’s dad had almost gotten shot again today. Lydia could tell from Stiles’ face that neither the Stilinski household savings, their insurance, the sheriff’s health, nor Stiles’ sanity could have handled that.

She nodded and they left quietly, the door remaining unlocked behind them. It wasn’t really a problem. If anything other than their friends barged in she’d just scream.

“Did I hear voices?” Parrish mumbled into her stomach.

“Scott and Stiles wanted to make sure you were ok. Stiles say’s he owes you a favor now.”

“Mm. Be a crap deputy, jus’ standin’ around.”

He settled back against her, heavy warmth, his flanks against her calves. She tugged her hood back just a moment to kiss his hair.

*

Lydia hadn’t really expected to share a lot of firsts with Jordan.

There’d be stuff between them that was new of course, but it wasn’t like he was her first boyfriend or anything, she’d had several, and despite her and Jackson being a complete mess they had been serious together for quite some time. There’d been several other flings before Jordan as well, summer toys from other schools whose names she pretended she’d forgotten, and Aiden who was neither fling nor actual boyfriend or still alive.

So Lydia had thought she’d tried most everything people actually did together at least once, with the exception of sex with another girl, because if she hadn’t done that the time she and Allison bought a really fancy bath bomb and got in Lydia’s tub together she was never going to.

But Jordan kept surprising her.

He was definitely the first guy to make her breakfast the next morning. That had been completely unexpected and had happened more than once now. Occasionally, very occasionally because Jordan was an actual morning person and she was Not, she woke up first, got to observe the loose curl of his fingers, the faint, breathy snore if he was flat on his back, got to kiss him awake or pet him while he slept depending on the time.

He was the first guy to pull her up to straddle his face.

She hadn’t even caught on to his intentions at first. They’d tumbled into his bed, already half-undressed and mouths flushed from kissing.

He’d smiled on his back, said, “Come up here,” and she’d straddled his stomach, let him feel her sex hot and wet against his bare belly, rocked down shamelessly and cupped his face to kiss. He hummed, wrapped his hands around her thighs and tugged. She settled more of her weight on him, kissed his forehead and nuzzled down against his neck where he always smelled so nice, but he kept tugging, lifted her a bit until her knees were on either side of his head, shins resting over his biceps and skirt rucked up around her waist because _oh my God_.

She ended up with her forearm shoved between her teeth, stifling the raw animal keening sounds, clawing at the wall above their heads until she almost blacked out because it was so good.

Fooling around in the shower was different too. As in, a lot of the time they actually just showered together.

Sure she’d blown him one time with water running over her face, and wet soapy hands had been absolutely everywhere by now, but a lot of the time they just rinsed clean together, sharing water and company and warm, slick skin.

Jordan took a particular delight washing her hair. 

Or there’d been that _horrific_ time a spare tampon had caught on her headphones and fell out of her purse right next to his foot.

Jordan picked it up and said, “Here,” handed it to her, and went back to lacing up his work boots.

Lydia stared. “You picked it up,” she blurted out.

“Sorry. It fell out of your bag.”

“…but, you picked it up.”

“Yeah?” and then at a higher pitch, “Am I supposed to pretend I don’t know you do that?”

She blinked. “I guess not.”

Or the one and only time she’d been too distracted about school to get off again and tried to fake an orgasm with him, except he’d figured _that_ out in about ten seconds. That was the closest she’d come so far to actually pissing him off, and it hadn’t been any fun at all. She’d used to piss Jackson off just to amuse herself.

“I still have two perfectly good hands. Don’t let me _do_ stuff like that.”

“Seriously, Jordan, it’s not a big deal…”

“Yes, yes it is. That is not why we’re, not why I’m doing this. You can’t just…”

“Ok.”

“Ok?”

“Ok. I won’t do it again. I mean it.” She’d just, never actually considered he’d get upset over that.

Even the normal things, things that were actually a bit lame, cooking boring dinners together, walking somewhere for lunch, their late night coffee meetups, sitting on the couch together and only half paying attention to whatever was on.

Everything with him was just _better_.

*

“Parrish, what the hell is up with you today?”

“Huh?”

Deputy Marcus glowered over at him and Parrish felt his heart lurch for just a second before rationality took back over like it always did and pointed out that there was no reason to think any of the rest of these guys were anything like Hague.

“Seriously? You’ve been humming nonstop for almost an hour. Would you please shut up? The rest of us have paperwork to do too you know, and I’d like to be able to actually leave at the end of my shift. What is with you today?”

“I uh, I slipped on a bobbi pin this morning.” He smiled again at the memory. It hadn’t been a big slip or a big object, it just made him notice things, like the spare socks and panties and a couple delicate shirts that were in one of his drawers, the yellow comb in his bathroom, and some misplaced bobbi pins on the floor. Having her things around when she wasn’t there made everything a little more real, a little less like something he’d wake up from, and find his apartment empty of leaves and playing cards and Lydia.

He’d had the music turned up in his car on the way to work, windows rolled down a bit to feel the spring air. Ok, maybe he had been actually humming the same first verse of _Tattoo of the Sun_ over and over instead of just having it stuck in his head.

And he might have been smiling at nothing for a few minutes because now Marcus was looking dubious in his general direction.

“Ug. Dude, if this is what you’re like after every time you get laid you might need to just take one for the team and give all that up.”

Of course, right during that is when the sheriff opened his office door.

Parrish tried not to look up over at his face too slowly and make things even more awkward, but when he finally looked the sheriff had his face screwed up in disgust. Marcus was carefully looking very busy, the jackass.

Sheriff Stilinski sighed and glanced at the ceiling longingly, like perhaps he’d look back down and have different employees. “I did not hear that. I don’t know anything about that. I will never know anything about that and if you like your life, Parrish, you will keep it that way. Understood?”

“Yes sir, sorry sir.”

Marcus sniggered as soon as Stilinski went back in his office and Parrish chucked a pen at his head on principle, grinning when it thwaped solidly against Marcus’ skull and the guy started cursing.

Parrish was too happy and too relieved to care that he’d probably pay for that later. Everything with Lydia was better than he’d ever dreamed when he’d thought about being with someone, the sheriff didn’t seem nearly as pissed off about things as he’d been worried about, and the Hellhound was dormant and lurking in the back of his head where it probably couldn’t hurt anyone.

Without noticing, he started to hum again.

Clarke spluttered a laugh into her coffee cup.

*

Lydia’s car hadn’t started after class that day, too little gas and she hadn’t even noticed. Instead she rode along with Stiles and Malia to the police station, so he could check in on his dad before dropping her off near home. Scott had offered her a ride too, but she’d _walk_ home before she got on his deathtrap of a bike, and it was nice to spend time with Stiles and Malia together, even in this deathtrap of a jeep.

Last week Lydia and Stiles had gotten into another fight in the math hallway over some of the newer cholesterol studies and they hadn’t really spoken since due to different schedules. It was still strange to get to argue with someone about topics that were actually at her level and no one was actually mad or offended or looked at her strangely later. Malia was mystified by this new habit of theirs, but it was still nice. Stiles was much more fun to argue with when no one’s life was hanging in the balance.

But.

But right as they pulled up she saw Parrish practically dash out the station door and into the arms of a pretty, brunette woman who laughed and kissed his cheek, familiar and affectionate. Jordan was smiling widely. She saw him smooth a hand over the woman’s hair and Lydia’s nails curled and bit into her palms. Faintly she heard Stiles swear as she watched Parrish dart back inside, leaving the woman to wait for him by her car.

It was a Friday, she wouldn’t have normally seen Jordan till Sunday afternoon. Last night their goodnight kiss had lasted for well over five minutes, her fingertips sliding down under the waistline of his pants over the soft skin of his belly, his tongue curling lushly into her mouth. 

This didn’t make any sense.

The woman was slender, professionally dressed in slacks and dark flats. She was maybe a few years older than Jordan, her hair pulled back into a low bun. Lydia’d never seen her before. A few minutes later Parrish came back outside in a different shirt, most of the uniform left behind, and got in the woman’s car, still smiling. They drove away.

Lydia stared after them, her mind blank.

“Lydia. Hey! Lydia, you want me to follow them?”

She nodded without looking up at their faces. Malia rolled down her window and Stiles pulled out of the lot a few minutes later.

She wasn’t angry. She remembered exactly how it had felt, the sick curl of rage, watching Jackson turn all his rare sweetness to Allison, and this was nothing like that. This was hollow disbelief. No matter how she looked at it she simply could not make herself believe it. There must be some other explanation. If he’d realized he needed someone closer to his age in a relationship, someone more mature, an actual peer Jordan would have told her. He wouldn’t lie to her face. Not like this. He just wasn’t that kind of guy. They could stay friends, couldn’t they? It might take her awhile, sure, but college would surely provide enough distance to manage it. They had more in common than their private relationship, had mutual friends and experiences. It would have been ok eventually.

This just didn’t make any sense.

Stiles was worryingly good at following someone without looking like he was doing it, Malia’s keen nose letting him hang back from the other car even further than he could otherwise risk. When the woman parked at the nice diner on Elm Street and she and Parrish went in, Stiles pulled around the far side of the building and parked.

He and Malia turned around to face her again.

“So, what’s the plan here Lydia?”

She hadn’t actually given any thought to what she’d do but she said, “I think I’ll go in and introduce myself.”

Malia nodded seriously. “Open confrontation is usually best with this stuff. Get it out in the open.”

Stiles flapped a hand. “Whoa whoa, confrontation! Might be escalating things a bit fast for the small, local diner setting we’ve got here.” 

“I’m just going to talk. I won’t jump to conclusions. There has to be a better explanation for this,” she said. Stiles was looking back at her, sympathetic, kind. Perceptive. It was something he’d never have been able to manage two years ago. He’d grown so much.

Unfortunately right now she hated it.

“Look Lydia, we’ll be right out here the whole time. And I still have a bat in the trunk. A metal one now!” he emphasized with a quick thumbs up.

She got out of the jeep before anyone could bring up Malia’s claws, out and drumming on one tense thigh.

The diner wasn’t crowded, but Lydia still lingered by the door, watched them. Jordan wasn’t wearing that rare open smile anymore but he still looked happy. She couldn’t see the woman’s face, she had her back to the door, but she heard her laugh. It was a nice laugh, high but not too loud, mature and poised, the kind you’d use at business lunches and other such things.

Before she could lose the rest of her nerve Lydia walked over to their table, sat down next to Jordan and said, “Hi Jordan,” sweetly, like she was surprised to see him here.

Jordan looked over, and he looked happy to see her, surprised, but not like he’d been caught out in an awkward or terrible situation. “Lydia! Hi. What are you doing here?”

That reaction wouldn’t make sense either, but having looked across the table Lydia’d already seen it, same pointed nose, same green eyes with no significant pupilar ring, same slightly small mouth with a nicely shaped upper lip.

A familial resemblance.

Oh this was awful.

“Nothing, just saw you inside. Though I’d say hi real quick.” 

Lydia hid her shaking hands in her lap, smiled politely and tried not to look like somebody who’d thought something was terribly wrong 20 seconds ago. She must have not quite managed it because Jordan was starting to frown.

“Thought you got to go home early on Fridays?”

“Car got too low on gas apparently. I ended up waiting for Stiles to give me a ride.”

Parrish’s sister looked more bemused than anything watching them. “Who’s this Jorden?”

“Oh! Sissy, this is Lydia Martin. Lydia, this is my sister.”

Lydia reached across the table to shake the offered hand, forced a genuine smile on her face, “It’s so nice to meet you.”

“Cecelia, please. I honestly didn’t know Jordan had met anyone outside work. Figured I’d better come visit and make sure he hadn’t turned into a complete hermit out here.”

“Oh come on Sissy. You know, I came home for Christmas? You just saw me a couple months ago.”

Lydia patted his shoulder. That was a pretty general gesture to make. It shouldn’t make implications. “You actually don’t get out much Jordan.”

“Thanks a lot,” he said, but he bumped his knee against hers under the table. “Everything’s ok though?”

“Yes. You know we’re on a block schedule. I just had to wait for Stiles to be finished with class.”

“Class?” Cecelia asked.

“We’re seniors at Beacon Hills High.”

Cecelia’s expression became a little fixed.

Lydia probably should have said something else, but it was too late now and she wasn’t quite sure if she even wanted to lie about that or not. Still, she could have been more vague. There wasn’t a community college in Beacon Hills, but Cecelia probably didn’t know that.

Jorden didn’t even react. “Are you sure everything’s ok?”

“Yes, yes but I’d really better go. Stiles and Malia are waiting outside with a… baseball bat.”

“Seriously Lydia, is something wrong?” he asked, and she could tell he thought something unnatural had come up, that he was ready to drop everything here with his family and make some excuse to come help them.

She squeezed his thigh under the table, where no one could see, felt the familiar warm canvas over his pretty legs. “Nothing. Not a thing. False alarm.”

She shouldn’t do it, but she couldn’t resist hugging him around the neck, kissing the top of his head when she got up to leave.

Eyes were on her back the whole way out the door.

“So?” Malia asked impatiently when Lydia slammed the door behind her. “What’s the deal?”

“His older sister,” Lydia sighed, staring out the window to hide her flushed face.

“Oh! Well, hey that’s good news! Everything’s fine.”

“Right. Everything’s fine.”

Lydia ignored them while they exchanged a look, almost jumped out of the jeep when Stiles pulled up to her street and almost slammed the front door behind her.

Maybe she’d just never go outside again. That seemed like a valid option at this point.

*

“What was that all about?” Sissy asked, and Jorden heard her, but he was still stuck on the way Lydia had walked away, too quick and stiff but she’d said nothing had happened…

“Oh no.”

“Seriously Jordan, what?”

“She thought I was cheating on her.”

“Cheating,” she said flatly, and he’d known he probably shouldn’t use that word, that Sissy didn’t know about the friends he’d made here and why, didn’t know who Lydia was to him or how they’d met. It just slipped out.

It took him a minute to meet Sissy’s eyes. “Sissy there’s been a lot that’s gone on that I haven’t told you about.”

“I’m getting that. You better spill buddy, cause this is _so_ not what I was expecting today.”

But they got quiet after ordering food, as people shuffled by to other tables or brought their glasses of iced tea.

Jordan dragged a rounded, human fingernail across a groove in the table over and over. Sissy waited silently. She could always wait him out, no matter what he’d done, even when he’d broken that car window at 14.

“You remember, when I was MIA for a few days,” he started.

“As if I’m ever going to forget getting that goddamned phone call.”

They’d decided to list her as the primary contact instead of their parents, who had upcoming retirements and Teddy to worry about. If anything had gone wrong it had seemed like they might take it better hearing it from her. He’d gotten the picture it hadn’t really helped that much though.

“I, I got more hurt during that than I ever told any of you.”

She took a sip of tea and sighed. “I’d been starting to think that. What happened? Can you tell me?” But Jordan laughed a little and Sissy felt chills at the sound.

“I healed. Well. Very. Very well. There aren’t actually any marks from what happened. I didn’t know what to say.”

“You still could have told me. You were only back for two months and then you moved away almost overnight.”

He could have. He probably should have. She’d made time for him to do it, time with just them. He could have told her about the creepy nightmares or the restlessness and she’d have listened. She’d have made excuses to the rest of their family for him. Jordan knew he could have said something without getting into anything to do with the hound. He just, hadn’t. “I should have said something. I’m sorry.”

“Ok. That explains the quiet. Maybe it even explains moving all over California. Sometimes people need a change. It doesn’t explain why you seem to be dating a _schoolgirl_.”

Jordan grimaced at her tone, but at least she’d kept her voice down. “It’s not…”

“What, it’s not like that? She’s a student Jorden. Seriously, how old is she? Do I want to ask that?”

“She’s eighteen. She’ll be nineteen in a couple weeks. We’ve only been dating about four months. God’s sake Sissy you know me better than that.

“The fact that I know for sure you’re not a psycho is why I’m still sitting here Jorden. Otherwise I’d have already been out the door.”

He’d worried about this, even as he’d leaned into those first kisses with dizzy joy, when he’d burned his way into a hospital prison to get to her, the first time his hands had touched her bare skin he’d been worried about this. His family, hers, the school, his coworkers. People that would never be able to understand the whole story. Their friends understood, even their enemies understood. But not everyone.

Jordan tried to smile when their food arrived. They both started eating in awkward silence.

“Tell me why you’re doing this. Make me understand why you’d do something like this.”

“She’s, special.”

“Hmpff. Do better than that.”

“Look, we met while I was working. I met her again later on. She’s brave. And smart, she could have graduated early if she’d wanted to. I know her friends, most of them are my friends too. She kissed me first or we wouldn’t be together. If she’d been younger I’d have waited. If she wasn’t interested I’d still want to know her better, be a part of her life. And we knew each other before anything ever happened. She’s, special.”

Sissy was staring at him. He’d never seen that look on her face before.

He couldn’t tell her about the hound. He never wanted her to know, but, “I know I never planned on this, any of it. It’s not what I used to talk about doing with my life. But. She helped me. And she didn’t have to. And I’ve been able to be in the right place at the right time to help her too.”

His fries were cold now but he ate them anyway. Sissy sipped her tea and stared out the window at the swaying palm trees.

“Ok.”

“Ok?” That didn’t necessarily mean anything good.

“Ok. I’m going to take your word for it for now. I’m not going to call mom and dad and tell them you’ve lost it. I’m going to do what I came here to do and make sure you have food in your fridge and your apartment isn’t full of tin foil hats.”

Parrish snorted at that, but started feeling cautiously relieved. “You know, I am an actual functioning adult here. Did you want to go check that right away? Or…”

“Nope. You need to get back to work and I need to find a hotel before we do dinner later.”

“Why? I thought you’d stay with me?”

“Jordan, buddy, I am not sleeping on that piece of crap couch you love so much.”

“Well I thought you’d take the bed. I’ve bought one. It’s a real apartment this time. Like I told everyone at Christmas, I like it here.”

She snorted. “Yeah. Not now that I know where it’s probably been I will not.”

Unfortunately Jordan blushed immediately, hot all over his face, and Sissy started cackling the same way she always had, after winning squirt gun fights or light saber battles or taking an awkward picture of him and he knew they were going to be ok.

But he still needed to talk to Lydia. Something still wasn’t right.

*

By Friday night Lydia had helped herself to the vodka and was about as drunk as she’d ever been. She’d gotten more wasted in middle school, the first few times she drank, but she hadn’t been drunk in a few years now. Why bother.

But Mom was out, Parrish was busy, and Lydia was a pathetic idiot.

She’d spent so much time feeling ancient around her peers, stifling her real interests under inanities, not so much these last few years of course, but it was a feeling she was still used to.

Today she’d been a catastrophizing, insecure, conniving little girl and it felt more awful than any time she’d ever been one before. She’d thought she was better than that now. Well, maybe she never would be. What’d she know, really. Numbers and dead people and everything else was a sham.

When her phone buzzed she expected a homework question from Malia or Kira, but it was Parrish.

 

_You thought I was cheating on you._

_sry I dunno what I thought_

It took too long to type the response but she wasn’t going to call. She’d probably slur and might cry hearing his voice no matter what he said. It was a while before he responded, long enough she’d dropped her phone next to her head on the bed before it buzzed.

 

_Could you come talk to me? Please?_

_M rly drunk right now babe_

_I’m outside your back gate._

 

He didn’t say anything else, no comment about her drinking or any other plea for her to come outside. Lydia stumbled into her bathroom, downed a glass of water and splashed some more on her face, twisted her hair up out of the way with a plastic clip before she walked very carefully down the stairs.

Jordan was standing outside the back gate, hands in the pockets of his grey jeans, face as unreadable as she’d ever seen it. It was possible she was just that out of it, but she didn’t think so.

She had no idea what he might be thinking right now.

“It’s unlocked,” she said.

“I’m not coming in; you said you’d been drinking.”

His voice wasn’t judging, but it was flat. It wasn’t warm. Lydia shrugged but didn’t apologize. He knew they all drank underage and so had he.

“I’d have told you my sister was coming to visit except I didn’t know. She surprised me.”

“I understand,” she said, because what was there to say. He kept _looking_ at her.

“Yeah. Ok. What I _don’t_ understand is why you had such an easy time thinking I’d cheat on you.”

“I didn’t think…”

“No, that’s exactly what you thought,” he cut in.

Oh it was different, how he was mad with her. It wasn’t fun at all. He looked like something hurt.

“I know. It was. I just, didn’t think.” She glanced around the garden because it hurt to see his face like this, so closed off.

Parrish sighed and rubbed a hand over his eyes. “Lydia, I don’t get where this is coming from. I thought we were… I thought things were, solid, with us. I thought everything was good.”

“It’s not anything you did Jordan. Don’t worry about it.

“I’m worried about it.”

She didn’t know what to say. What could she say. She sucked in a breath and it wavered. “You’d tell me first, wouldn’t you if, if this wasn’t working out, if you needed someone your, your own age or better or different, you’d just tell me, right? I wouldn’t have to find out like that.”

“Lydia…”

But she was too upset and too tired and too drunk to stop the tears, so she whirled away from the conversation, put her back against the solid brick and turned her face where he couldn’t see it.

He stayed silent while she angrily swiped a hand across her face. But after a minute he squirmed his wrist through the gate, still wouldn’t open it, put his fingertips against her elbow and rubbed.

“Lydia, if we… That’s never how that would happen, ok? We’d talk it out, right?”

“I know. I know. I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t know. I’m sorry.”

She blinked and stared into the porchlight. “You didn’t do anything Jordan.”

“Maybe not. But someone or something did, so, I’m sorry.”

She still didn’t know what to say. One of his fingertips curled and tugged at her elbow.

“Would you come back? Just for a minute. Please?”

She sighed, wiped her face like it was going to make a difference and turned back to the gate. He still wouldn’t come in and she didn’t blame him, but they laced their fingers between the chilly bars.

He kissed her forehead and she shivered. “I’m not looking for anything we haven’t got Lydia.”

“Ok.”

“I should actually go though. You’re cold and it’s late.”

She almost laughed, swallowed hard and it got her voice to steady. “And you’re neglecting your guest. Go on.”

Jordan’s face was lovely and familiar, not blank, warm and focused. He nuzzled her fingers. “I’ll see you later.”

“Of course you will,” she said. Lydia wasn’t looking for anything else either. She didn’t plan to.

*

Monday night Lydia’s buzzing phone woke her out of a hazy dream, somewhere dusty she couldn’t picture. She never left it all the way off these days, the way their lives had been. If someone called her in the night there was usually a pretty good reason for it.

But it was only a text from an unknown number.

 

_Hi Lydia, this is Cecelia Parrish, I got your number from Jordan before I left._

_Look, I won’t pretend I get whatever’s going on between you_

_and my brother, or that I’m sure I’m even ok with it._

 

_I can tell he’s doing a lot better than the last time I saw him._

_He seems settled here, so that’s going to have to be enough_

_for me for now. And it’s not like you don’t have options if he  
     isn’t who I think he is._

 

_I don’t know you. But I know I gave you a hell of a fright when you_

_saw us Friday, so I’ll have to meet you the right way next time_

_I’m in town._

 

_No matter what, I thought you could probably use these. You’ll_

_definitely get more out of some of them than me - C_

 

There were pictures, several pictures following the message. The first was of a little boy in a cowboy costume, maybe four years old and clutching a plastic pumpkin. Lydia was still drowsy enough it took her a minute to realize what she was actually looking at.

Oh. Oh my God that was _Jordan_ , little baby Jordan with teeny hands and blond hair.

She sat up in the dark, tapped the next picture, saw him a year or two older standing cheerfully next to a girl that had to be Cecelia, younger with a pony tail and freckles and wearing a softball uniform. One had him maybe eight years old, still blond, skinny arms holding a plump and squirming toddler around the waist. A younger sibling or cousin, she’d have to ask him which. She should have asked before, but it’d never come up.

There were a few more. Jordan covered in mud outside in the rain, a group photo with what must be his high school baseball team, a really bad yearbook photo with one eye half shut and cowlicks in his hair and a big red scrape on his chin that she’d save for just the right moment to threaten him with sharing.

The last one must only be from a few years ago, and he was shirtless in army fatigue pants, a baseball bat over one shoulder, smiling and sunlit and wow.

_Wow_.

Lydia would _definitely_ get more use out of that picture than his sister.

She only sent one picture in return, one of her favorites. She’d managed to snap it with one hand, the other in the picture with her fingers in Jordan’s bedhead. She’d managed to pin him still and smear lipstick kisses on his cheek and he was flushed from laughing in the picture. Only half her own face was even visible, half her smile.

 

_Thank you._

*

Lydia was getting used to coming to the lake house with it empty, climbing the stairs to that quiet room in the dark and only flicking on a lamp after she’d already shut herself into the quiet.

There was no tremor of terror in the walls of this room for her anymore.

Mom had never actually seen the computers Grandma had hidden here, the FBI had taken them away quickly, and the sheriff had only told Mom that someone had tried to hide incriminating evidence for murder in the house since it was empty for sale.

Mom had never really even asked, just paid for the new drywall with a heavy sigh.

But the record player was still here. It still worked.

She sat in front of it for long minutes. It always took her a while to convince herself to turn it on. She didn’t need anyone here with her to do this, not really. She didn’t get dragged down so deep anymore, was stronger now.

It felt like a long time since the only power she could tap into was screaming herself awake. It’d only been two years.

It was just, it was so very quiet in this room.

But she needed to keep trying this. This was something she knew she could actually do.

Lydia turned the record on.

She remembered vividly the sensations of walking around with Meredith. Out of body experience, etheric projection, not astral, they’d stayed in a real enough place and time. Eichen House was carved into her bones both literally and figuratively now. She should be able to find it easily.

As soon as she could remember how to let her mind slip out of her body.

The human brain, banshee brains included, was at the most basic level a collection of electrochemical signals. Dopamine, GABA, Serotonin, Acetylcholine, Noradrenalin. Synapses and pale protein water mush. Lydia was not willing to think of this with the term ‘magic’. Through observation she changed and defined her own reality. It was just particles, electrochemical signals. Any electrical signal could travel if you provided the right conductive environment, and Lydia lived as part of an environment few could access.

Scott’s description of Meredith had worried her.

There was no one to check on Meredith, no one to visit, and none of them could come and go from Eichenhouse with any kind of safety or reliability. But Scott had described Meredith as more gone than here, so she had to try.

She’d tried this over and over. It’d been months.

Tonight she breathed out and stood up.

She stood up, but her body, her physical body stayed sat on the carpet in her Grandmother’s Lake House. When she tried to move her hands she saw her image move and not her body. When she took a step the carpet didn’t make a sound. It was just like last time.

She willed the door to let her out and moved down the stairs. There was no time to waste. Even in this state of energy it would take a while to get to Eichenhouse.

Without the drugs and the pain it was easy to hear. Jordan and Meredith showed up in her mind like stars, sharing her wavelength, sounding like bell tones. Scott crackled like a bonfire, and then there were the scattered handfuls of candlelights that had to be Betas or creatures like them.

Besides those lights, and a distant, quiet ember in the woods that had to be the nemeton, this dimension was quiet. She knew the roads to get to Eichen House, as if they were etched into her skull, but the cars that passed her sounded miles away. The leaves that blew through her feet didn’t rustle. The crickets were silent.

The building looked exactly the same as it had the past fall, lit dull grimy yellow, hazy around the edges from the mountain ash.

Meredith’s light was a wavering sound. It didn’t take long to find her.

“Meredith?”

The only other banshee she’d ever really known  was laying on the cot with her eyes half open, occasionally blinking out of instinct alone. She didn’t move at Lydia’s voice. The blinds were open wide and the door behind her was locked.

“I thought you might come to see me soon.”

She whirled around to see Meredith standing outside her own door. Her etheric form reflected her real body on the bed, gaunt and pale. Lydia blinked and Meredith was beside her, waved without looking and moved to stand by the window. This side of the building could see the little courtyard. It made it look more like a normal place, a normal hospital, somewhere without a basement prison.

“Scott said you seemed tired. I, I wanted to make sure you were ok.”

“Scott’s kind. He’s a special alpha. You know.”

Meredith hadn’t given her body so much as a glance. Lydia shivered as it blinked again. There were little paper cups on the table bolted into the wall, a crumpled sheet of paper. Benzodiazepine. Supplements. Olanzapine? Others she didn’t even recognize. Benzos she could understand, Meredith was very anxious, but olanzapine she remembered was a heavy antipsychotic.

“Meredith, how many of these do you actually want to take?”

Meredith shrugged by the window as her body lay in the bed. “Doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter what they give me.”

“It does matter. You’re not psychotic Meredith, you’re a banshee. These are heavy drugs. They could hurt you. Which ones are you used to taking? Did something change?”

Meredith only shrugged again. “I walk around like this a lot. Go outside. It’s much easier once you’ve done it on purpose once or twice.”

Lydia sat down on the bed, though the familiar squish of the mattress made her heart twitch, picked up Meredith’s hand to hold and watched Meredith lean against the window frame. “I’m not sure how to help you, what you need.”

“I’m very, tired Lydia. I’ve hurt a lot of people. And I never wanted to hurt anyone. Anyone.”

“You helped me. You know you helped me,” she said. Meredith was fading. Lydia could hear it. She was older than she looked, but too young to go like this. Not here.

“I’m glad, but I don’t think that was quite enough to make up for what I’ve done.”

“You don’t owe this for what happened. It’s not a trade Meredith.”

“Of course not. It just is. We can both hear it.”

She reached out and set her fingers against Lydia’s cheek. Ether to ether she felt the faint touch. “You’ll scream for me, when I go. I know you will.”

Lydia blinked wearily, sadly and opened her eyes back in the lake house.

The record had run out. It was still dark, but she could tell it had been hours. Her legs were so stiff she had to stretch them out with her hands before she could stand. She needed to get home now. She had class in four hours.

Meredith was such a dim sound now, so much further away than the last time they’d been in the ether together.

Lydia would have to go to Deaton. There had to be something better they could do.

*

They’d only been awkward together for a few days.

Lydia had thought the embarrassment would linger worse than it did, but Tuesday she drove to his place as usual and curled into his chest when he opened the door like she meant to never leave. They didn’t talk about it anymore, but Jordan looked less stung when she finally stepped away with a quick kiss to his shoulder.

They were still good.

It was still both weird and nice having a routine with someone again, a rhythm to a week. Though it was still strange sometimes that it wasn’t wholly centered around school.

They still had coffee most Thursday nights, Lydia slept at his apartment most Sundays and sometimes they went out somewhere together first, something simple. They went and saw Warm Bodies back in February and he’d kept his arm around her in the dark, the bag of popcorn balanced against his leg. They didn’t make out in the theater, she didn’t put her hands down in his lap. She leaned against his shoulder and they ate popcorn and watched the movie together.

It was all so nice and healthy as far as the dating thing went sometimes she had to stop and consciously remember that it was actually _real_.

No matter what else came up Lydia always came over on Tuesdays for a few hours, to talk or practice hand to hand and hopefully make out at least for a little while.

After she’d gotten out of the hospital the defense lessons had, escalated. He’d taught her before how to throw a punch without hurting herself, how to block a grab or a hit, break a hold, where to kick so it really hurt. Now he also told her the best way to press a thumb into someone’s eye socket and pull, the little spot under a nose to hit or dig in with a nail, new purposes for a ball point pen. Meaner tactics than she would have felt capable of two hospitalizations ago.

She felt plenty capable now.

There were four little scars on the left side of her neck that she knew he somehow still felt guilty for.

And far out in the woods, where there were no more little neighborhoods or lonely houses to hear, she brought Allison’s pretty bow along and practiced shrieking at dead tree branches shoved into the loam, practiced tossing pebbles into tree trunks with one loose, outstretched hand. She plucked the bowstring and thought she heard a kiss sound to her right, mwuah, but she didn’t turn to look.

The pebbles burrowed deeper in the wood every time. She couldn’t pry them loose anymore.

Today she only felt like making out, if not even more, so she wore the blue heels. Jorden was already shirtless, hanging up his uniform when she let herself in and they were tangled together on his couch before either of them even managed to say hello.

She rubbed her knuckles along the front of his jeans to hear him hiss. “Are you ever going to actually put this in me?”

“I don’t want to rush into things with you.”

“I’ll have you know I was fifteen the last time that was something new and shocking Parrish.” He mouthed at the skin under the neckline of her blouse again, his arms tight around her waist as he held her on his lap. She liked being on his lap. It made her feel tiny and sexy and safe, and he was always so warm.

“Really? I guess you’ve got me beat. I was sixteen.” He dragged his teeth lightly along her jaw and she gasped, clutched at his hair.

“Oh yeah?” She couldn’t really picture him at sixteen, not like this, despite the pictures. He was slender now, so he must’ve been skinny then, probably a narrower jawline and those big green eyes. He would’ve been _cute_ , almost a little delicate, but she liked him so very much the way he was now. How he felt under her hands as she scratched down his neck and ran her palms over his chest.

“Yeah, and it was at one of those wholesome, outdoorsy youth summer camps and it was completely awful. There weren’t real showers at the place. The whole thing lasted about 10 minutes and there were cartoon pajamas involved. Not sure it actually could’ve been more awkward.”

Lydia sat back on his thighs to stare at him. He was frowning a little at nothing, mouth tight like the mere memory was enough to make him cringe.

She finally laughed so hard at that she almost slipped off his lap and fell, and he ended up clutching her tight to his chest and giggling into her cleavage.

She never would have let herself do something like that before, something so awkward and clumsy, without poise or sex appeal. No image, nothing like what she’d worked so hard to appear to be for so long. And she didn’t even _care_. She didn’t care about it at all, not with him, was honestly starting to forget how she ever had.

They made out on his couch for half an hour, lost one of her shoes under his kitchen table for about ten minutes of frantic looking, didn’t even end up having sex and when she kissed him goodbye at his door because it was Dinner Night with her Mom, it still felt like it had somehow been a picture perfect evening.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah. Long time no update. Author is a slow updater. I found season six to be an incredible downer compared to 3-4-5, and so was not inspired for a while. But this is my reality for season six, so yolo. ;p
> 
> I had a lot of parts of this that made me anxious to write and a lot of bits I was fighting writers block on, so please let me know what you thought. There are still two more chapters, but this one will probably end up as the longest. I hope to update again in a few months this time. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> I can't say when part two might go up, but I do have more than 60% of the rest of this written and outlined. It will be finished! If you find any mistakes in here feel free to let me know! All feedback on the fic is welcome. I do have a tumblr over [here](http://meanderings0ul.tumblr.com) . I don't do anon, but my ask is always open for random questions or comments. Thanks for reading!


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